To stay the most up to date with changes in information that may affect your success in school, your profession and ultimately the workplace environment I suggest you use scholarly journals, e-journals, magazines, newsletters, reviews, serials and periodicals. Peer Reviewed journals are also a great scholarly source. Since, they are published frequently they can keep you more up to date on research, experiments and other professional developments in your given area or professional field.
As information literate individuals I know you understand that popular sources are aimed at the general public and are published to make a profit. Unlike scholarly journals, popular sources are aimed at informing the general public on broad issues and varied topics or are published for entertainment of lifestyle coverage. An example of a place to find popular sources takes us to the check out counter at your local grocer. These sources of information occupy a place where the public usually congregate as well train stations, corner stores and street vendors.
Scholarly sources are housed in your local branch library and at the major research libraries in New York City. You can also access some on the World Wide Web. Of course, now more than ever, databases are excellent for retrieving information from various scholarly journals! Periodical sections are separate from the rest of the library and many libraries have extensive collections in a wide range of professional and academic fields. Periodical librarians are specially trained to deal with serials, organizing them and making them accessible to those professionals and students in the given discipline. These types of frequent publications may come out in numbered and timed sessions; since these are numbered either by issue or volume they are called serials. Other times referred to as periodicals due to the consistent release date of the publication.
So what are some major differences between the two?
Here are some differences I looked up in an encyclopedia:
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Scholarly Sources: |
Popular Sources: |
| ·Articles often have an abstract, a descriptive summary of the article contents, before the main text of the article·Often contain many graphs and charts but few glossy pages or exciting pictures·Always cite their sources in the form of footnotes or bibliographies. These bibliographies are generally lengthy and cite other scholarly writings Articles are written by a scholar in the field or by someone who has done research in the field
·The affiliations of the authors are listed, usually at the bottom of the first page or at the end of the article–universities, research institutions, think tanks, and the like The language of scholarly journals is that of the discipline covered ·It assumes some scholarly background on the part of the reader ·The main purpose of a scholarly journal is to report on original research or experimentation in order to make such information available to the rest of the scholarly world |
·May be written by a professional writer who is not an expert in the field·Rarely offers information about the sources of information. No footnotes or bibliography.
·Text reports events or opinions and is aimed at a general audience ·Tend to be highly pictorial·A lot of advertising ·Are generally published for profit ·May be intended as a vehicle of opinion: political, moral, social, or ethnic |
