LibGuides: Grad Student Research Toolkit: Reference Sources

Reference Sources

What is a reference source?

A reference source is a scholarly discussion that summarizes and synthesizes topics, concepts, or the scholarly conversation about a particular topic/concept. Typically, a reference source does not contain original research. These sources provide important background and contextual information on your subject. Reference sources include bibliographies, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and handbooks. You can use this type of source to help narrow your research topic, brainstorm types of data that might support your thesis, and identify keywords and main ideas to use as search terms.

Select Reference Databases

Credo Reference
Online reference resources from numerous publishers. This reference resource can be searched by individual title, broad subject headings, cross-references, audio and images. Use its research mapper to search for terms and topics that are interconnected and displayed in (a) visual form.
Oxford Bibliographies
High-level overviews of scholarship written by top names in the field get researchers and faculty up to speed quickly on topics beyond an area of expertise.
Oxford Handbooks Online
Oxford Handbooks Online is a collection of the best Handbooks across many different subject areas. One of the most prestigious and successful strands of Oxford’s scholarly publishing, the Handbook series contains in-depth, high-level articles by scholars at the top of their field.
Oxford Reference
Provides web access to more than 100 major Oxford University Press dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference works in the humanities, social sciences, foreign languages, science, technology and medicine, the performing arts, and religion.