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PolyU Library

University English

Your Starting Point for Research and Study

Where to Start?

You can start by reading background information on your topic and developing your terminology around the topic. 

1. From Reference Works

Reference works include Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, Handbooks. They provide authoritative summary information on a field or subject.

Reading articles published in reference works help you: 

  • Understand the key issues, history, and sometimes, latest debates on a topic without going through dozens of books, journal articles, and other materials.
  • Develop a mind map on a topic and learn keywords and terminologies for further research. 

 

Useful Reference Works Resources:

Below are some recommended sources where you can find reference works. Try searching your topic in any of these sources and see if you can find any interesting articles and further expand your terminology.

Credo Reference helps you find short articles on a topic from thousands of reference books in different disciplines. It's the scholarly version of Wikipedia.

Here you can see an example. After searching the topic, we got a few articles (and sometimes a mind map too) related to the topic.

Credo Reference

SAGE Knowledge is another database to find published reference works. If you wish to explore a topic in more details, you can read more from these handbooks and encyclopedia articles.

Sage knowledge 

OneSearch is library's search engine where you can find almost everything the Library has including books, journals, DVDs. You can use OneSearch to search the reference works too. Run a search on your topic and limit by "Reference Entries". Clicking on the search result will bring you to the article published in reference works.

Find Reference entries in OneSearch
Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia. It's a great tool to help you quickly get an overview of a topic and understand the key issues or latest debates.

Sometimes students may come up with this question:

Should I use Wikipedia for research?

The short answer is, yes you can. However, you need to:

  • Remember that Wikipedia is a wiki where anyone can edit, delete or add false information.
  • Always check the source and cite the original sources.
  • Use information from credible sources, e.g.scholarly journals, government websites, professional associations, reputable online newspapers, etc.

Below is a snapshot of an Wikipedia article's reference list, with a few creditable sources highlighted.

cite the original sources

 

Tips for Developing Terminology:

You can use a mind map to jot down and structure the keywords you have collected. Simply draw on a piece of paper, or use an online tool such as Whimsical, Miro, MindMeister or XMind.