Most Library online resources can be accessed from off campus by current UD faculty, staff, and students. When using links on these pages, you may be prompted for your UDelNetID and password. Please report any issues you encounter while accessing Library databases, e-journals, or e-books.
This guide will provide suggested resources in book, periodical, and web page formats, as well as suggested databases to use to locate print and electronic articles, proceedings, and book chapters. Related subject guides are listed to the left, which can be used to identify additional resources in other disciplines of interest.
Choose a research topic that interests you. Once you have thought of a topic, try stating it in the form of a question. This will help to narrow your topic and focus upon the aspect of the topic that you are going to research. So if you first thought of writing about fish stocks and water quality, try stating it in the form of a question: "How is the quality of water in inland bays affecting the stability of the commercial fish stock?"
Reading an overview of your topic from a general source such as an encyclopedia provides background information, key words, and often a list of books and articles for further reading. This is the only step at which using Wikipedia is appropriate. Use the background information you located to determine key words or phrases that might be used to describe your topic. You may want to focus on a particular animal (blue crab) or a particular aspect of marine science (ocean currents).
You can use these keywords to search for books or magazine, journal and/or newspaper articles. Use the tabs on this guide to learn about each of these formats.