Welcome to your Rhetoric of science Research guide! Here you will find helpful tips, tricks, databases, and tutorials for the research you will be doing while taking this course. If you need further help than what is available on this guide, please contact a librarian and we will be happy to assist you further.
This guide is designed to help you identify and utilize the different types of sources commonly consulted in the sciences. It also gives an overview of how to find sources from the citations of other sources, and guidance on crafting your own citations.
You may be familiar with the concept of Scholarly vs. Popular sources from other classes at Holy Cross. Scholarly articles are peer reviewed pieces that are written by experts in the field and published through academic publishing houses. Popular articles are published by magazines, blogs, social media, etc., and do not necessarily undergo a thorough editing process and are written to entertain, persuade, or inform the public at large. In between those two things are what we call Trade publications, and they contain BOTH types of sources plus a few other things that might be relevant or interesting to those interested in the trade or academic field. Think of trade publications almost like their own database - you can find many different sources on them, depending on what you're looking for, but not all of the sources are necessarily made equally.
Below is a chart breaking down the differences in sources to give you an idea about what kind of information you can learn from them.
Below are the call numbers by subject for the Science Library at Holy Cross. Use the call numbers to navigate our collections by topic and search the physical collection for books that interest you!
