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Becoming A Scholar

This guide shares content relevant to the Becoming A Scholar course, the first year student experience in the Bluffton Blueprint.

The library provides hundreds of search tools to help you locate the information you need when gathering sources for a paper or project.  For this module, we'll highlight two popular search tools AND we'll suggest where you can find others when you need them.

Start Your Research...

When you're ready to begin searching, try Start Your Research Here, a curated list of library research tools perfect for the novice researcher!  Use the link above, or find the link on the library's homepage.

Or, find this list at Musselman Library Homepage > Find Articles and More in Research Databases > Start Your Research in the All Subjects list.

Scholarly vs. Popular Sources

What's the difference between a scholarly source and a popular source?  Why should I use scholarly searches in my research?  What does "peer-reviewed" mean?  This video (produced by Carnegie Vincent Library at Lincoln Memorial University) will help you understand the differences between these sources and the reasons for using each in your writing.

Searching the Bluffton Library Catalog

Learn how to use the Bluffton Library Catalog to search for books and other library materials on the shelves at Musselman Library, available virtually as e-books, and requestable through the OhioLINK and SearchOHIO library catalogs.

Find Articles and more in Academic Search Complete

Learn how to use our most popular research database, Academic Search Complete, to find both scholarly and popular articles from journals, magazines, and newspapers. This tutorial will also help you decode the parts of an article citation and show you options for reading the full text of any articles you find in your searching.