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Reference Sources

Reference books like encyclopedias can be really helpful when you're getting started on your research. An encyclopedia article gives you an introduction to or overview of a topic, and usually ends with a bibliography of references. The Science Library has some pretty advanced encyclopedias that go into very specific areas of science and give references to the peer-reviewed literature.

In the Science Library:


Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences.(6 vols.) SCI REF QC854 .E522 2003

Encyclopedia of Planetary Science. SCI REF QB600.2 .E53 1997

The Solar System (3 vols.) SCI REF QB501 .S625 1998

Online Reference Sources (must be on campus, or an authorized UO user if off campus, to access):

Encyclopedia of Hydrological Sciences

Gale Virtual Reference Library

  • You can search the whole collection, or see particularly: Chemistry: Foundations & Applications, Environmental Encyclopedia, or Water: Science & Issues.

Oxford Reference Premium

  • Again, you can search the whole thing, but the most useful source for your purposes is likely to be the Encyclopedia of Global Change. Also contains many dictionaries, scientific and otherwise.
Compare the above reference sources with:
Wikipedia
  • Do the articles have identified authors? Are the authors credentials and affiliations available? Do the articles have references or bibliographies? If so, are there differences in the kinds of references given?
  • Wikipedia is a very handy, free Internet source, but it is not necessarily reliable. For a humorous demonstration of this phenomenon, watch this excerpt of the Colbert Report on Comedy Central (looks like you have to sit through a brief commercial first, though.)
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Finding Books

Your first stop for finding books is the UO Library Catalog. If the book you want is checked out, or otherwise not available, click on the button at the top of the page that says "Repeat in Summit". Summit is the combined library catalog of over 30 academic libraries in Oregon and Washington, so there's a very good chance that your book will be available there. You can request it via Summit and have the book within 2-3 working days.


Keyword searching is the most flexible way to search for books by topic. You can combine multiple terms, but some cautions do apply. Many search tips are available on the keyword Advanced Search page.

Subject Headings help make your topic search more relevant, but you have to use the "correct" heading. One way to find subject headings is to start with a keyword search, find a book title that looks relevant, click on it, then look for the subject headings in that record. Click on a subject heading, or copy it to combine with a keyword.

Author searches must be entered last name, first.

Title searches must start from the beginning of the title (minus any "initial articles" like "the", "a", etc.), but you don't have to type in the entire title.

For more searching help and tips see the guide: Sample Searches in the Library Catalog

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Finding Articles


The best way to find scientific, peer-reviewed (or refereed) articles, is by searching a database that indexes scientific, peer-reviewed journals. You may also be searching for articles in the popular press and news magazines. An article in a magazine such as Scientific American can be very helpful for gaining an initial understanding of a topic.

The search box below will search 3 library databases. One covers popular and scholarly periodicals (the term "periodicals" covers both "journals" and "magazines"), the other two cover mostly scientific, peer-reviewed journals.


To see if you can get the full article, click the button. Another window will appear. If it says at the top "Full-text available from: ____________" click that link. If no full text available, click the link below to go the library catalog, to see if we have a paper copy.

If you want to search the databases individually:

Academic Search Premier
  • Good for its mix of popular, news and scholarly articles. You have to exercise your critical evaluation skills to help determine what's what. (Do NOT rely solely on their limit to peer-reviewed feature--it is not reliable.)
GeoBase
  • An earth sciences database that includes a lot of climatology and atmospheric sciences.

Web of Science
  • Interdisciplinary science database, a highly-used source for science literature.
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Maintained by: Victoria Mitchell, vmitch@uoregon.edu