How to recognize the types of sources that you need - The art of distinguishing between the useful and the superfluous [Voice-over] It’s Wednesday morning. After three weeks of hide and seek with his to-do list , the guilt has caught up with Fred. His subject? [Dialogues] Fred, monotone, facing camera: Napoleonic propaganda during the campaign in Egypt. [Voice-over] But Fred is not a specialist. So Fred went to the library and started looking. And since he’s always afraid of missing something, he cast a wide net. But he doesn’t really remember what he did. He really only remembers clicking “Search,” “Print,” “Search,” “Print.” Next, Fred went looking for books in the stacks. When he finished, he went over his search results. [Dialogues] Fred: Hello Librarian: Hello Fred: I’d like to check out these books. Librarian: Ah yes, great. Your library card? [Voice-over] He realized he had picked up: two volumes of an illustrated encyclopedia, E for Egypt and B for Bonaparte; conference proceedings published in 1965 by a Bordeaux history society; a history series on DVD that reminded him that he hadn’t owned a DVD player in 3 years; a work entitled “With Bonaparte in Egypt and Syria, 1798 to 1800”; and… [Dialogues] Librarian laughs: … a comic book. Librarian, ironic: So, to return in 28 days or in 2 minutes. Fred: Thanks. [Voice-over] Bonaparte: the campaign in Egypt, as illustrated by Jacques Martin. Good choice, Fred! How about you? What types of sources do you normally use for research projects? It can be tempting to check out books without taking the time to ask ourselves if they really pertain to our needs. To avoid wasting time, it’s important to analyze sources according to what kind of work we’re doing. What are you working on? Bachelor’s term paper? Semester project? Critical summary? Case study? Literature review? Each document has its own use and each project its own sources. From the more general to the more specific, we can find the following: • Dictionaries and encyclopedias are useful for identifying concepts and their context, finding definitions and tables, and having a subject overview. They can be used to access information quickly via alphabetical order or theme. • Books and textbooks focus on one subject, allowing you to deepen your knowledge and master a discipline. • Journals and reviews contain the latest research on a topic, and are good for finding specific information and rounding out your knowledge of a subject. Don’t forget that there are several types of scientific publications in journals and reviews: • Research articles contain specific information that is usually more up-to-date than books. • State of art or reviews summarize the established knowledge within a field, for a given period or a particular area. • Conference proceedings contain detailed summaries of presentations made by one or more researchers at a conference, colloquium, or other scientific meeting. • Gray literature refers to anything that is published outside of commercial publishing channels (reports, conference papers, dissertations, working papers, institutional repository, etc.). They are published with few copies and can usually be directly consulted where they were produced (university, organizations, businesses). There are also standards, patents, statistics, audiovisual resources, legal texts, market research, etc. Coming back to Fred, who needs general information about the campaign of Egypt, he really only needs one or two books on the subject. If he had asked an expert and thought about what he needed beforehand, he would have saved a lot of time. [Dialogues] Fred: I’ll just take the comic book.