ENGL 127 Research Writing: Social Sciences (Schaefer)

This research guide is for students in Amanda Schaefer's English 127: Focus on Family & Home

Beyond our collection: Interlibrary Loan

Using the Interlibrary Loan Service

InterLibrary Loan: No library has it all! But the InterLibrary Loan (or ILL) is a service offered by Holman Library for borrowing books and articles from other libraries. InterLibrary Loan requests are free to current GRC students, faculty and staff.

For your research, it is important to search many places.

  • First, start with the books and articles available through the Holman Library.

  • Then, If you find books and articles that the Library does NOT have access to, just request them through Interlibrary Loan.

  • Using Interlibrary Loan increases the amount of resources available to you and helps you become a more thorough researcher.

Note:

  • Books and other items that require mailing may take 1-2 weeks.

  • Articles and other digital items may arrive within 2-5 days. Use your email as your contact info and the article will be sent directly to you.

If you need help filling out this form, call the library reference desk at (253) 931-6480.

Other places you can search...

Use the links below to look for books, articles and more beyond our collection:

Holman Library - find books with One Search

Find scholarly books in Holman Library

Use the One Search tool to find print and electronic books in Holman Library.

Wondering what to type in the search box? Be as specific as possible for better results.

Some examples:

  • medicine is a broad search that generates 1224 results.
  • "alternative medicine" is a narrower search that generates 56 results.
  • acupuncture is even narrower and yields 18 results.

Try Subject Terms to find the most relevant scholarship.

Identifying scholarly e-books

Identifying a Scholarly Book

How can you tell if a books is scholarly?

Below are some important indicators to help.

As shown in the image below, you can see that...

  • Scholarly books have academic language and often, a complex title.
  • They will often have multiple, academic authors
  • And the publisher will be an academic one, often a University Press

(click on image to enlarge)

image of the ebook showing the title, author, and publisher

 

  • Here you see the author's academic credentials are established at the front of the book. You will see information showing their experience and works, such as the long list of articles show here, written by the primary author. 

(click on image to enlarge)

page of the ebook showing the author's past works
 

  • While not overly reliant on academic jargon, the scholarly intent of the book is apparent in the table of contents.

(click on image to enlarge)

page of the ebook showing the table of contents

 

  • Scholarship is an ongoing conversation in which academics build on and respond to the ideas of others. Their extensive use of in-text citations indicates where this author references and builds on the work of other researchers and scholars.

(click on image to enlarge)

page of the ebook showing in-text citations and references to other researchers throughout

 

 

  • You will also see that the book clearly cites it sources throughout the book, but also in the book's bibliography. Here, you can see that this bibliography is 20 pages long. This indicates that the author has clearly used and built on the ideas of others in the field, other scholarship.

(click on image to enlarge)

page of the ebook showing the bibliography

Scholarly Books

Scholarly Books

Books can be scholarly too! How can you tell? 

A scholarly book will: 

  • Be written by an expert or experts in the field (PH.D., M.D., etc)

  • Usually present new research or analysis of previous research

  • Offer sustained, sophisticated, and in-depth analysis and discussion

  • Often be printed by a University Press

  • Not be written for popular audiences

  • Include extensive references to other scholarly work

Searching for scholarly books

While you can limit a search for articles to scholarly (peer reviewed) journals, you cannot do the same with books. 

You can, however, use the library’s online catalog to look for scholarly books: 

  • Read the record for the author and publisher. Are the credentials academic?

  • Many of our scholarly books are ebooks. That gives you a chance to assess if the book is scholarly!

  • Most of the world’s library catalogs are available at www.worldcat.org
  • Use WorldCat to search for scholarly books we don't have at Holman Library. Use InterLibrary Loan to borrow scholarly books and articles from other libraries. You can also look online at what's available at local universities like PLU, UPS, UW, UW Tacoma, etc