Instructors often ask students to find “scholarly”, “academic”, or “peer reviewed” sources of information for their research. These terms all refer to the same type of information – sources based on in-depth research, and are considered higher in quality and more reliable for your research.
These sources can range from chapters within books or entire books, or journal articles, but all have common characteristics that can help you recognize that type of information.
Phrase Searching - PittCat allows for phrase searching with the use of “ “. For example, the search "climate change" will find items with the phrase climate change in them.
Wildcard and Truncation – You can use wildcards (* and ?) symbols to search PittCat.
Advanced Searching - Check the Advanced Search for more tips and techniques to enhance your search, including Boolean Operators (AND, OR, NOT). Note: Boolean Operators must be entered in all uppercase/capital letters.
PittCat is the main searching tool for all of the materials owned by the University Library System (ULS), including articles, books, ebooks, journal articles, ejournals, audio and video, digital images, government documents, microfilm and movies.
This scholarly collection provides journal coverage for most academic areas of study, including biological sciences, economics, communications, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts and literature, medical sciences and women's studies. This is an EBSCOHost database.
JSTOR (Journal Storage) is a digital library that provides online access to academic journals, books, and primary sources in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. It is a trusted source for scholarly research and provides access to over 6,000 academic journals, more than 2 million images, and over a thousand books. The platform has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to search and access high-quality, peer-reviewed content. JSTOR also features advanced tools for research and discovery, including citation analysis and alerts for new content. It is a valuable resource for scholars, students, and researchers in the academic community.
Health and Psychosocial Instruments provides ready access to information on measurement instruments (i.e., questionnaires, etc) in the health fields, psychosocial sciences, organizational behavior, and library and information science.
Learn how to set up Library Links through Google Scholar to get access to full-text content.
