Reference sources, like dictionaries and encyclopedias, provide you with background information on a topic. Gaining foundational knowledge is a good idea before taking a dive in article databases because the kind of information in the databases is very specific, and you might not yet have some of the needed terminology.
Although there are many general encyclopedias, such as Wikipedia and World Book Encyclopedia, there are many specialized encyclopedias that focus on particular subjects or disciplines.
Example:
"Jesuits—Iberia and America" is an entry within the encyclopedia Iberia and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History.
Like reference sources, books can help you get a broader understanding of a topic. They can also provide context for the specific studies you will come across in article databases. They also analyze primary source documents from a specific time period. For fields like the social sciences, art, and humanities, books and book chapters can be very helpful.
Scholarly books are published by university presses, such as UC Press, NWU Press, etc.
Monograph books are books in which all of the chapters have been written by, typically, one author.
Anthologies are books in which every chapter is written by a different author. The chapters are collected into one book by an editor.
Example:
Esplendores y Miserias de la Evangelización de América : Antecedentes Europeos y Alteridad Indígena is an anthology.
Scholarly articles are usually reviewed by experts in a process known as peer review before they are published in journals, publications focused on a particular subject or professional activity. The purpose of scholarly articles is to share research findings.
Scholarly articles in the Arts and Humanities may read more like essays, rather than reports on scientific experiments. In the Humanities, scholars are make logical arguments based on the evidence they have researched and analyzed. In history, for example, a scholar may look at the primary source documents from the time period they are studying.
Example:
"Estrategias de conversión y modos indígenas de apropiación del cristianismo en las misiones jesuíticas de Maynas, 1638-1767" is an article published in the journal Anuario de Estudios Americanos.
"El Anuario de Estudios Americanos es una publicación periódica de la Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos de Sevilla (CSIC) desde 1944. Dedicado a un público especialista, sus dos volúmenes anuales incluyen artículos originales y reseñas y críticas de libros y reuniones científicas en español, francés, inglés y portugués. Si bien la revista está orientada a la investigación histórica, también publica trabajos de otras materias como la crítica literaria, la ciencia política o la antropología, en un intento de potenciar el diálogo multidisciplinar" ("Descripción de Anuario de Estudios Americanos").
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