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SOC101 Library Research Skills Guide: Find

Scholarly Resources

For your assessments you need to find scholarly resources which are academic or authoritative sources.

Academic or scholarly resources are written by experts who aim to generate new knowledge or summarise existing knowledge. They will inform, use formal language and include references. They include some books and ebooks, journal articles, conference papers, and theses. You are asked to use these types of sources as they are more likely to be accurate, they often contain recent research and it is specialised knowledge.

The best place to find these resources are in Primo Search and the Library Databases.

Interpreting citations

Recommended readings in your subject site can give you an idea of the type of resources that your lecturer values.

Distinguishing between citations for books, book chapters, journal articles and websites can help you to search for the items in Primo Search, Google Scholar, or Journal Databases.

Below we list some of the most common resources and their citation structure when formatted in the APA 7th style.

Book citation structure: Author/s. Year of publication in parentheses. Book title in italics. Edition in parentheses. Publisher.Book chapter citation structure: Author/s. Year of publication in parentheses. Chapter title. Editor/s. Book title in italics. Edition and page numbers in parentheses. Publisher.Journal article citation structure: Author/s. Year of publication in parentheses. Article title. Journal title in italics. Volume in italics, issue in parentheses. Page numbers. DOI.Webpage citation structure: Author/s. Year of publication in parentheses. Title of work in italics. Title of site. URL.

Finding readings in Primo Search

If you paste in the whole citation you will usually get no results.

  • Search for the article title for a journal article.
  • Search for the book title for a book or book chapter - add an author if you get too many results.

Charles Sturt University acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands on which its campuses are located, paying respect to Elders, both past and present, and extend that respect to all First Nations Peoples.Acknowledgement of Country

Charles Sturt University is an Australian University, TEQSA Provider Identification: PRV12018. CRICOS Provider: 00005F.