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Knowledge for Freedom - KFF: Introduction to Research

This guide was created to support the information needs and library instruction links for the students who are part of the Knowledge for Freedom program at TU.

McFarlin Library Resources

  • A-Z Database List
    • McFarlin has over 500 databases that cover all major subject areas studied at TU.
  • WMS Discovery (The library catalog)
    • You can use Discovery to search for articles and books both owned by McFarlin as well as libraries worldwide
  • Journal List
    • With nearly 1 million electronic journals and newspapers, McFarlin has scholarly publications for every discipline.
  • Special Collections
    • Open to all TU students and the public, this collection of books, manuscripts, artifacts, and artwork is a incredible resource that is utilized by scholars worldwide. Make an appointment through their website.

Tulsa City-County Library

All TPS students have a free library card from TCCL. You can use this for academic and career research!

To access your account, REMEMBER:

  • your lunch number = library card number
  • your password = your birth year

Citing Sources

  • ZoteroBib
    • ZoteroBib helps you build a bibliography instantly from any computer or device, without creating an account or installing any software.

Research Tips

The Information Lifecycle

Thinking Critically About Information

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a version of the Google search engine that searches the web for scholarly publications (primarily articles and books). 

Important note: Articles found through Google Scholar are not guaranteed to be peer-reviewed. Additionally, Google Scholar cannot access proprietary databases such as those in EBSCOhost.

Google provides links to the articles it finds, usually on the publisher's website.  You will be able to access the full text of the article if:

  1. the article is freely available (i.e. in the public domain or open access)
  2. McFarlin Library subscribes to the journal online and you are on the TU campus while using Google Scholar

You may not be able to access the full text through Scholar if:

  1. McFarlin Library does not subscribe to the journal online and it is not freely available
  2. McFarlin subscribes to the journal online and you are off-campus
  3. McFarlin has access to the journal online through a proprietary database (such as EBSCOhost, ProQuest, Gale, etc.)

When you find a source in Google Scholar, you must check to see if the journal article is scholarly, or peer reviewed. To do this you will need to copy the name of the article or journal in the citation. See below

Once you have the name of the article, you can search for the article in Discovery to confirm the article is scholarly, as seen below.

If you want to see if an entire journal has peer-review status, you can search for the journal title in our journal list. See below.