This page offers tools to explore subjects in geoscience, geography, planning, innovation science and environmental science.
Here you'll find:
And you might try:
The first stage in finding information is a short exploration of your subject. You ask yourself questions such as:
To answer these questions you can investigate your subject briefly with the help of some of these reference works and search engines:
Many of the online reference works can also be found as books in the collection G-REF (2nd floor of the University Library Uithof), sections D and F.
A first phase in searching is a short exploration of your subject. Ask yourself:
To answer these questions you can search some of these reference works:
The first phase of searching is exploring your topic. Ask yourself:
To be able to answer these questions please explore some of these reference works and search engines:
(English version); Wikipedia has often referneces to some basic literature. You can also search geographically for Wikipedia articles via Google MapsBefore you dive into specialist literature it always helps to get some basic information first and contextualize your topic. You can use reference works for that:
Although there are thousands of these type of reference works there is no guarantee that they will be available for each and every topic. Also the delineations between the different types mentioned above may be quite vague.
Finding these reference works is not that hard. Using the advanced search in WorldCat. Search the title field with handbook OR encyclop*. On a second line of the same search again select the title field and type in a search term describing your subject (e.g. energy, transport*, horse*, renaissance, copyright, drug abuse or gravitational waves) .Try various (broader and narrower) terms that describe your topic. An increasing share of the search results will be available as e-books.
You can also try other terms describing reference works: dictionary, compendium, gazetteer, manual, textbook or truncate some of the terms, e.g. encyclop*. If you need to find non-English reference works, you need to work with non-English terms.
The most important reference works are also mentioned in the list of search systems on the library website.
In scholarly research, Wikipedia can be used for:
Please bear in mind that the various language versions of Wikipedia may differ: as a rule the larger versions (for instance the English version) is of a higher quality, because on average more people contribute to an article. Compare the article in the different language versions.
Another thing one can do is study the talk pages of an article. It shows the (low or high) level of discussion amongst editors. You can take that into account in your decision on how to use the information provided in the article.
Contrary to what is often thought, Wikipedia is a reference work with explicit rules, policy and control.
In the special LibGuide Wikipedia more details, background information and examples of good Wikipedia-use.