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APA Tutorial: Source Types

This guide is to help you understand the nuances of writing, citing, and avoiding the pitfalls of plagiarism

Sources

Libraries have many kinds of resources for your use to help you. There are dictionaries, encyclopedias, magazines, journals, newspapers, books, data,  videos, music, legal treatises, maps, government publications, reports, thesis & dissertations and digital resources.  These materials come in a multitude of forms and formats including in print, digital, and microformats being the most popular.  

An excellent guide to understanding these resources is available from the City College of San Francisco Library, Guide to Library Resources. Another outstanding APA Citation Guide is from Columbia College in Vancouver, Canada.  This guide would not be the same without the work of the librarians who generously helped me. 

Google, Yahoo, versus library databases

The image below is from a web site entitled the Elixir of Knowledge which reveals how the dark web is not indexed through search engines like Google or Yahoo or a library. Much of the material available on the Internet is not readily accessible through search engines like Google or Yahoo.  More is available through Libraries and the databases to which they subscribe as shown in this illustration below.

 

visual representation of the internet in colo

What types of resources do I need?