Research Process: Choosing Your Research Tools

Sometimes your assignments will suggest that you search a particular journal or journals for articles on your topic.

Holland College Library's Journal Title List can help you determine which journal database provides access to a specific journal.

The number of information sources available to students and researchers has increased substantially over the last number of years!

Below we outline some of the most common sources for information for research papers. Most students will use information from one (or more) of the following sources: Books, Journal Articles, Search Engines & Websites, and Scholarly Search Engines

Where do I find these sources? 

• To locate books, you will use the Holland College library catalogue.
• To locate journal articles, use the Holland College journal database
• To locate websites, use a search engine like Google or Bing
• To locate a scholarly search engine, use Google Scholar

You should be able to apply your search strategy to any of these tools! Generally, well- written research papers use all four of these sources. 

The PDF document above takes a little closer look at each of these tools.

Holland College Library Services subscribes to a number of journal databases, which cover a wide variety of subject areas.  Any valid/current Holland College student or staff member can search these databases via the Internet. There are also a number of freely available databases listed in our database list. These are open to anyone, not just members of the Holland College community