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ART 101: History of Art: Prehistoric to Gothic (Wheeler-Loudoun)

This guide has been created to help you find books, articles, and other types of resources related to this program of study. Direct comments to Julie Combs, jcombs@nvcc.edu.

Overview

How To...Identify Scholarly Information

In college classes, you may be required to use scholarly information.  Sources of information can range from being not scholarly, to very scholarly, to somewhere in the middle.  Each source will go somewhere on this Scale of Scholarliness:


0 |------------------------------------------------5-----------------------------------------------| 10

Least Scholarly                                              Mid-level                                               Most Scholarly
     Ex.:  children's books                                         Ex.: magazine & newspaper articles                          Ex.: academic journal articles
                                                                                  

Where on the Scale of Scholarliness does your source fall?
To make your determination, consider the six things listed below.  Click on each box to learn more.

Author Credentials Audience purpose
Publisher Editing/Review References

All images are in the public domain or under Creative Commons licenses. 

Characteristics of Scholarly and Popular Sources

Scholarly Sources
journals		 Popular Sources
   newspaper
Author:
Experts, researchers		 Author:
Reporters, journalists, professionals, company employees, or anyone
Written for:
Other experts and researchers		 Written for:
Regular people
Publisher:
University, academic press, sometimes government		 Publisher:
Newspaper, magazine,non-academic publisher or website
Vocabulary:
Advanced, technical, scholarly		 Vocabulary:
General language
Purpose:
To report research findings, build on the academic literature		 Purpose:
To inform, entertain, convince, market, or sell
Editing:
Reviewed by other experts (peer review)
 Editing:
Basic editing
References:
Yes; look for footnotes or a list of sources at the end of the article.		 References:
Not usually, though studies or other sources may be mentioned

Video: Evaluating Sources for Credibility

This video, from North Carolina State University, discusses using some of the ideas on this page to evaluate the credibility of a source.