The Library has lots of reliable resources, including reference books and journals, to help you. Studies continually demonstrate a correlation between improved grades and library usage, so be sure to use the suggested research strategies provided on this page. 

Starting Out

Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) is a great database to begin your research. This database consists of reliable encyclopedias and reference books, giving you an overview of the topic.

For example, the book below may be useful for researching chemical experiments.

You can also search the collection with any of these suggested keywords:

• atomic theory
• periodic table of elements
• chemical bonds

Finding Journal Articles and other Publications

Find reputable journal articles in ProQuest Central.

 A great way to narrow your results is to combine search terms and search more specifically. For example:

• "mole measurement" chemistry
• "chemical bonds" "chemical reactions"
• "organic matter" chemistry
• "inorganic matter" chemistry

Quick tip: Using quotation marks is another way of narrowing your search results. The quotation marks tell the database to look for the words closer together (as a phrase).

Need more?

You can also try expanding your research by using the box on the Search page of this research guide. This box, powered by EBSCO Discovery Service, will expand the resources beyond just ProQuest Central and include everything EBSCO and our other databases has to offer.

Quick tip: To refine your search results even further, be sure to use the various limiters in all our database. These limiters include, but are not limited to, publication date range and source type.