Engineering and Physical Sciences Library> Guides to Information Resources> Gemstone Team: GRENERGY

Gemstone Team: GRENERGY

The University of Maryland Libraries provide numerous services to facilitate the process for finding information related to alternative energy resources. Many UMD librarians have subject expertise and can assist you with finding information related to your research project. This page was created as a list of resources for you to use anytime, anywhere. But this page shouldn't and won't replace help from your advisor, mentor, or librarian!

Looking for...

Books

Journals

Databases

Web Resources

...on this topic?

Need help Getting Started or Finding Books and Journals?

Contact your librarian and start finding answers!

Getting Started

Literature Review

A literature review describes, summarizes and analyzes previously published literature in a field. What you want to do is demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of what the "conversation" about this topic is, identify gaps in the literature, present research pertinent to your ideas and how your research fits in with, changes, elaborates on, etc., the present conversation.

More in-depth guidelines:

• University of Toronto Writing Centre
• UC, Santa Cruz

Research and Library Skills

Lists helpful resources relating to library research skills. Includes information on library services, how to search for books and articles, library maps and virtual tours, and other basic information.

Research Methods

This information on basic business research methods is in part adapted from the book Field Guide to Nonprofit Program Design, Marketing and Evaluation by Carter McNamara. Other resources on this topic include:

• Introduction to Research by Tyrus Hillway
  LOCATION: McKeldin Library Stacks
  CALL NUMBER: Q180.A1H5

• The Research Methods Knowledge Base by William M. K. Trochim
  LOCATION: McKeldin Library Stacks
  CALL NUMBER: Q180.55.M4T76

Searching

• Use AND to include only those results that have BOTH words: photovoltaic AND solar
• Use OR to include results that have EITHER BOTH or ONE of the words: photovoltaic OR solar
• Use NOT to exclude specific words. The document won’t contain those words: photovoltaic NOT solar

Example: Solar* will return “solar,” “solarimeter,” “solarism," “solarium,” "solarization," and "solarize."

Source Types

• Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources
• Types of Periodical Publications

Evaluating Information Resources

• Evaluating Books and Periodicals
• Evaluating Websites

Plagiarism

Note-taking

• Export citations from many of our databases;
• Add a button to your browser that will let you save websites to your working bibliography;
• Keep track of your citations in one place.

• Bibliographic Management Software
  http://www.lib.umd.edu/guides/bms.html

Helps researchers keep track of their references for research papers and other writing needs. Examples include Endnote, and Zotero.

Citation styles

• Citation Systems and Manuals
  http://www.lib.umd.edu/guides/style_manuals.html

An introduction to the citation process which includes information on style manuals, citation systems, and the importance of citing.

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Finding Books and Journals

• Call Numbers

  Books relating to similar subjects are often grouped together on the shelves. You can browse these call numbers virtually with the catalog or physically on the shelf.
  

  Topic	Call Numbers	Location
  Fossil fuels	TP318 .F525	EPSL
  Renewable energy sources	TJ808 .S54	McKeldin
  Power resources	HD9502.A2 O34	EPSL

• Keywords

  Using synonyms and other similar words and ideas in your searches can retrieve different results and help you find more resources.

  Fossil fuels

  Renewable energy

  Power resources

  Photovoltaic cells

• Subjects

  Try browsing the following relevant subjects to find more resources:

  Fossil fuels -- Environmental aspects.

  Fossil fuels -- Technological innovations

  Fossil fuels -- Research

  Photovoltaic cells -- Defects

  Photovoltaic cells -- Design and construction

  Photovoltaic cells -- Materials

  Solar energy OR Solar power

  Solar cells -- Design and construction

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Books

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Journals

The level of scholarship is different in various publications. Information on how to distinguish scholarly journals from trade publications and popular magazines can be found at http://www.lib.umd.edu/UES/journals.html .

For a complete list of journals listed by subject and held at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Library (EPSL) click here.

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Databases

• Plant Science Abstracts

Provides access to citations and abstracts of scientific literature on plant science.

• Science Direct

Provides abstracts and indexing for more than 1800 journals. Full text of more than 800 journals is available to USMAI institutions. Some articles are in languages other than english.

• Web of Science

Indexes over 17,000 journals by subject keyword, author name, journal title & author affiliation. Search author abstracts when available. Provides cited reference searching

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Web Resources

• Australian Research Online
  http://research.nla.gov.au/


• Electronic Environmental Resources Library (eERL)
  http://www.eerl.org


• Energy Files
  http://www.osti.gov/energyfiles/


• E-Print Network
  http://www.osti.gov/eprints/


• Google Scholar
  http://scholar.google.com/


• Science.gov
  http://science.gov/


• Scienceaccelerator.gov
  http://www.scienceaccelerator.gov/


• Scienceresearch.com
  http://www.scienceresearch.com/


• Scitopia.org
  http://www.scitopia.org/


• Worldwidescience.org
  http://worldwidescience.org/

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