Wikipedia

So you are ready to embark on a new research project, and you need some background information. Wikipedia is one place to start - and while it may seem to be the easiest option, after checking the article's grade, testing for verifiability, and reading critically to assess the article's neutrality Wikipedia appears to be much more work-intensive than it originally seemed. Fortunately, the LMU library subscribes to multiple online reference resources that are as simple to search as Wikipedia, but return results written by experts in the field with more comprehensive bibliographies containing a higher number of scholarly sources. This is not to say that the articles found on these subscription-based reference services do not require a critical reading, in fact they do. However, for scholarly and college level work, the articles and bibliographies in the online reference sites that LMU library subscribes to provide a less work-intensive starting point than Wikipedia: