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Use CREDO and Gale eBooks to find background information on theorists & theories, and other research topics. (4:32)
Let’s find background information about a theorist and their theory using scholarly resources.
Our example is Melanie Klein, an important figure in early 20th-century psychology.
We’re going to start by searching for biographical information about her in two reference databases: CREDO and GALE eBooks.
The articles that you’ll find in these databases will look a little like Wikipedia, except the entries are professionally edited, and were written by people who are confirmed experts in their field.
You can find all of the Library’s reference databases by clicking on the A-Z Database List on the Library’s homepage, and then filtering that list by TYPE.
Here’s CREDO.
Searching for Melanie Klein in CREDO retrieves articles from several encyclopedias and biographical dictionaries of psychology and sociology.
I’ll go ahead and click on this first entry from The SAGE Encyclopedia of Theory in Counseling and Psychotherapy.
I’m given a concise description of her personal and professional history, and some discussion about the importance of her work.
If I want to cite this article, I can use this CITATION option to generate a citation in MLA or APA style.
Just make sure to double-check any automatically-generated citation in case the database got something wrong.
CREDO will also try to link you other resources on your topic: for example, here are some scholarly articles and book chapters about Klein in some of our psychology databases.
We can also use CREDO find information about a theory.
Let’s do a quick search for Object Relations Theory.
Again, we’re getting results from a number of disciplinary encyclopedias.
If you're working on a topic that's time-sensitive, and would like to see content that's been published more recently, click on the ADVANCED SEARCH option by the search bar.
You can also use the FEATURES limiter if you want articles that are longer, that have biographical information, or that have images that you can use in your own paper or presentation.
Next, let’s look at Gale eBooks, which gives us a different selection of encyclopedias to choose from.
This lengthy article in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences is especially detailed.
If I wanted to cite it, I could click the CITE option here.
You can use CREDO and GALE to search for pieces of art, historical movements, scientific concepts, and all other kinds of information that you might turn to encyclopedias for.
If you need more detailed resources, you may want to see if the Library has other books on your topic.
The catalog can be searched from the Library's homepage.
Just tick the BOOKS option under the search bar.
A search for "Melanie Klein" retrieves quite a few books about her and her influence, and also books that Klein herself wrote.
You can learn more about using the Library's book collection in our "Looking for Books" tutorial.
If you need help finding information, the Library's staff are here to help you! You can email or chat with us by clicking on the HELP option on our homepage.
