OneSearch provides a simple way to search for popular and scholarly books, eBooks, videos, articles, digital media, and more, all in one place. In the search box above, you will see a drop-down list of options for filtering your search. This search provides several options for finding scholarly books:
Tredway Library Resources (Local+Articles): This searches all of the library's physical and electronic resources (books, eBooks, videos, journal/magazine articles, and electronic references sources). This search also includes items in Special Collections and the Swenson Center. This is the default search option.
Local only: Our catalog includes physical items found on the shelves in the Tredway Library, as well as electronic items like eBooks and videos. This search also includes items in Special Collections and the Swenson Center.
All I-Share Libraries: This searches for physical books and media from other academic libraries across Illinois. Many of these items can be requested for delivery to Tredway Library through a service called I-Share (eBooks, with some exceptions, are normally not available to request due to licensing restrictions).
How to Choose a Book (Chapter)
When you have found a book in the catalog, check the record for information about the publisher: books from university presses or from academic publishers will be your best bets for reliable information (e.g. Academic Press, Elsevier, Routledge, Sage, Springer, Taylor & Francis, etc.). Also check the chapter titles in the table of contents to help you decide what you might want to use as your source. The screenshot below highlights the areas of a book's record to check:
How to Request a Book
When conducting research using OneSearch, if you plan to request physical materials (especially from I-Share) then it is recommended that you sign in. Although it is not required to sign in with OneSearch to access ebooks or to find a call number to retrieve a book from our stacks for yourself, it is recommended for several reasons:
To sign in, you simply need to use your Augustana network ID and password. When you are on your computer, you can locate the sign in option in the upper right-hand corner. You may also click on the "Menu" option, and then click on "Library Card."
OneSearch provides a simple way to search for popular and scholarly books, eBooks, videos, articles, digital media, and more, all in one place. In the search box above, you will see a drop-down list of options for filtering your search. This search provides a couple of options for finding peer-reviewed articles:
Tredway Library Resources (Local+Articles): This searches all of the library's physical and electronic resources (books, eBooks, videos, journal/magazine articles, and electronic references sources. This search also includes items in Special Collections and the Swenson Center. This is the default search option.
Articles only: This option searches for journal articles, magazine articles, newspapers articles, and electronic reference material across our databases. Be sure to select "Peer-reviewed Journals" under the Availability filter (on the left side of the screen) after you have started your search. See the screenshot below for what to look for:
Other Best Bets:
There are over a billion websites on the web, so, whatever you're arguing, it's pretty likely you'll find websites that can give you both authoritative information to support your argument and interesting primary source material to analyze.
Pretty much all websites can be useful as primary sources, but only a relatively small percentage of them will provide you with authoritative information to support a claim. The most authoritative websites will usually be online scholarly journals.
But there are other kinds of websites that can give you authoritative information, too.
Identifying authoritative websites will be easier if you recognize and understand the significance of top-level domains. Top-level domains (TLDs) indicate in extremely broad terms what kind of website you're dealing with. Common TLDs are associated with extensions like .com, .org, .edu, and .gov.
The big thing you're looking for with TLDs is whether the associated extension is restricted or unrestricted. If it's restricted, you can infer quite a lot about the website. For example, if a website comes with a .gov extension, you'll know you're dealing with a U.S. government publication of some kind. Or if it comes from a .edu site, you'll know it's associated with a U.S. school, school district, or university. That's because the .gov and .edu extensions are both "restricted," which means that only qualified entities (government agencies and educational institutions in these cases) can use them.
If a TLD is unrestricted, then you can't really infer anything at all about the website. Take .org, for example. Even though it was originally intended for websites associated with non-profit organizations, now anyone can use it. So even if a company sells human organs on the global market for a massive profit, there's nothing to stop it from using a .org extension for its website.
The other important question to answer about websites is who owns them. Knowing a website's owner and understanding their agenda will help you determine the authoritativeness of the information you find on that site. As a general rule, the more qualified the owner is and the less interested they are in persuading you about something, the more authoritative the information is likely to be.
For example, a website owned by the National Education Association would likely have more reliable information on the benefits of using iPads in the classroom than would a website owned by Apple. It's not that you should automatically dismiss data on an Apple-owned site, but the fact that Apple has a tremendous financial stake in proving the educational benefits of their products should be factored into your evaluation. At a minimum, if you were making the case for the universal adoption of iPads, you would strengthen your argument by finding evidence from a site owned by an organization less financially invested in persuading you of a particular outcome.
Recommended Websites: