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Research Guides

Research Crash Course

What's the Difference?

ScholarSearch is Drew Library's Google-like search of resources—both scholarly and not—available to our users. Unlike a Google search, your results will be reliable, trustworthy sources that you can use for your papers and projects. 

ScholarSearch is a great starting point for your research.  When you use ScholarSearch, you are searching for the many resources that are available at our library. This includes books, e-books, journal and newspaper articles (including peer-reviewed articles), book reviews, encyclopedia articles, government documents, streaming videos, and much more. It searches almost all of our databases at once!

The Library's catalog is called Locate. It provides a precise method for searching the Library's collection. You can use the catalog to find books, e-books, special collections, government documents, and other materials. You can also find these things using ScholarSearch, which mixes these items in with results from our database subscriptions. Both tools can be useful. Many students will prefer the greater range of results and ease of use of ScholarSearch, while others find the ability to limit results to items in the Drew collections and the ability to search certain specific facets to be very helpful.

Since the catalog focuses primarily on books, it's a good place to look for lengthy discussions of topics.

Databases are collections of information that can be searched. They hold journal articles, books, book chapters, indexes, bibliographies, audiovisual materials, and more. While most library databases have a specific subject focus, many are multidisciplinary, as well, and cover a variety of topics. Databases are specialized, scholarly resources that the Library subscribes to. You can explore the Library's databases by visiting the A-Z List. You can either browse them alphabetically, filter them by subject, type, or vendor, or search for something specific in the search box. 

Questions? Need Help? Email reference@drew.edu

Drew University Library, http://www.drew.edu/library