Northern Kentucky University

Encyclopedias, Dictionaries, Handbooks, Etc.

Target audience: All types

Generally attempt to summarize topics and/or assist in finding secondary literature. The purpose of these sources is to answer short questions, provide background information, and help you find other sources. Reference works come in a wide assortment of types on all subjects.

Strengths:

• Good starting points for research, particularly in unfamiliar topic areas (disciplinary handbooks, subject encyclopedias)
• Good sources for quick facts, contact information, or statistics (almanacs, directories)
• Good for discovering new vocabularies (dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias)
• Provide lists of information sources on a topic (indexes, bibliographies)

Considerations:

• Usually tools for finding more in-depth information sources, rather than being sources themselves.
• Normally are found in the library's reference section and cannot be checked out. (Some are linked to a library's web page and can be accessed electronically from anywhere.)
• To start serious research, you should know enough about your topic to talk about it for 1 minute without repeating yourself.

This tutorial by W. Frank Steely Library, Northern Kentucky University is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Based on a work at www.lib.washington.edu.