The college libraries have tagged the relevant databases for each major area of study at the college in our A-Z list of databases. The Education Databases are your best bet for locating scholarly, peer-reviewed articles in education. Why choose an "education" database?
- A General Database covers lots of disciplines.
- The quick search box on the library home page
- Academic Search Complete
- A focused, subject-specific database narrows in to the sources for just that discipline.
- Provides search capabilities useful specifically for that discipline (e.g. the ability to search by grade level in education)
- On the library home page, click on "choose databases by subject and type"
- Choose the subject and type of sources you want and see what databases are suggested.
As a student, it is obvious why you need to use these search tools - "my teacher made me do it".
As a professional, once you are in the stream of communication from professional organizations, you will probably be able to keep up in general by reviewing the publications from the organizations you join. But if you run into a specific problem, challenge, or need, you may need to do a targeted topical search for information for your own needs.
And what about the rest of the real world? If you ever, ever want an outside entity to give you money, any grant-funding organization is going to ask you to justify what you are doing. A literature review that shows why you should be funded - that no one else has done what you are asking for money for - is critical. For that, you cannot rely on your browsing, but must find all the relevant things on your research topic.
