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Finding Credible Sources: Search Skills for Students (LibrarySkills)

Audience: PG taught, UG

Date: Thursday 22 October 2026

Times: 12.05 to 12.55

Key details: This library class is taught online via Teams.

Target audience

Undergraduates

Qualifications needed

N/A

Course pre-work

N/A

Course information

If your literature searches are turning up too much (or too little) of the wrong thing, this session is for you. Get to grips with what counts as a credible academic source, learn advanced search techniques and Boolean commands to sharpen your results, and find out how to locate the best databases for your subject area.

 

Aims and objectives

  • Understand what key academic sources are, including the differences between journal articles, books, websites and other grey literature sources
  • Appreciate the differences between a basic and advanced search and how this impacts the search results retrieved
  • Be able to use advanced search functionality in Library Search
  • Understand basic Boolean search commands
  • Know how to locate other databases which may be relevant to the discipline of study, using Subject Guides and A-Z of eResources

Tutors

Kayleigh McGarry

Sharon Nangle

Course provider

Library
Email: library@st-andrews.ac.uk