Access, use, and reproduction of the electronic resources made available through the Grinnell College Libraries are governed by license agreements with publishers which may impose greater restrictions on use than does copyright law. The user is responsible for observing these agreements as well as the copyright laws of the United States (Title 17, United States Code), including the fair use guidelines that protect scholarship and research.
When accessing subscription databases from off-campus, you will be asked to sign in using your campus username and password. If you have any problems accessing library resources from off campus, please contact Rebecca Ciota or Sheryl Bissen.
... questions to ask; how appropriate and valuable is the information? A worksheet to go along with the questions.
Source + Motivation = Value
Seek information, not affirmation
Primary and Secondary Literature:
Secondary literature looks like this or this ...
Primary literature looks like this or this ... (note the format--Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, References)
... what is the question(s) you are trying to answer? These secondary sources can help you --
*understand concepts
*answer fact questions
*discover search terms, phrases, and names
*focus a research question
Remember, true research is rarely a straight path.

1932-present. Provides critical reviews of the primary research literature in 46 disciplines within three broad catagories of academic endeavor: the biomedical/life sciences, physical sciences, and social sciences.

A major reference work drawing together 100+ contributions from leading scholars in the field representing a diverse range of approaches and methodologies to the key phenomena in phonological research.
Print Location: Burling 3rd Floor PE1106 .H74 2002
Print reference work providing a description of the grammar of general-purpose, present-day, international Standard English, offering a detailed account of the principles governing the construction of English words, phrases, clauses, and sentences.
"The aim of UNESCO’s Endangered Languages Programme is to support communities, experts and governments by producing, coordinating and disseminating:
--tools for monitoring, advocacy, and assessment of status and trends in linguistic diversity,
--services such as policy advice, technical expertise and training, good practices and a platform for exchange and transfer of skills." Information from the Guardian while UNESCO information is off-line (November 2016).
"An online resource to record, access, and share samples of and research on endangered languages as well as to share advice and best practices for those working to document or strengthen languages under threat."
Provides access to a large set of lexical characteristics, along with behavioral data from visual lexical decision and naming studies, for thousands of words and nonwords. Intended for research in psycholinguistics, human memory, computational modeling, and other fields.


An encyclopedic reference work cataloging all of the world’s 7,097 known living languages.
Note: A large database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials (such as reference grammars).
Print Location: Burling 1st Floor Z40 .W65 1996
Print reference book that explores in depth how scripts are applied to individual languages. Every major writing system is presented in a passage of text, accompanied by a romanized version, a phonetic transcription, and an English translation. A bibliography concludes each entry.
... these sources can help you find evidence to answer your question or validate/invalidate an answer. In Linguistics, primary sources can include many formats--journal articles, books, dissertations, reports, and more. When searching for evidence, be sure to look broadly.
Includes articles, book chapters, and images found useful by past and present Grinnell College students.
Frequent topics:
Arabidopsis | Caenorhabditis elegans
Callosobruchus (beetles) | Climate change
Effects of stress on plants | Escherichia coli
Microbiome | Pathogenic bacteria
Prodigiosin | Saccharomyces/Yeast
Serratia marcescens | Xenopus

Search these four databases as a good starting point for finding primary literature in linguistics and related areas.

Indexes journal articles and edited works in archaeology, anthropology, and linguistics; also covers sociology, history, ethnohistory, demography, geography, international development, and human genetics.

Before 1000 BCE to the present. Catalog of millions of books, web resources, and other materials held in libraries worldwide, maintained by the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC). The best way to identify resources beyond Grinnell College's collections.
"Provides access to a wealth of information about thousands of languages, including details of text collections, audio recordings, dictionaries, and software, sourced from dozens of digital and traditional archives."
HathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future. There are more than sixty partners in HathiTrust, and membership is open to institutions worldwide. Not all material is available to view as full text due to copyright restrictions.


Digital library that archives texts, audio, music, moving images, software, videos/films, and web pages from the Internet for researchers, historians, and scholars, as well as the general public. Also provides specialized services for adaptive reading and information access for the blind and other persons with disabilities.
"The series builds an extensive collection of high quality descriptions of languages around the world. Each volume offers a comprehensive grammatical description of a single language together with fully analyzed sample texts and, if appropriate, a word list and other relevant information which is available on the language in question."
International Linguistics Community Online; a forum where academic linguists can discuss linguistic issues and exchange linguistic information.
The full text of journals, magazines, newspapers, and books available online through the Grinnell College Libraries.
Accesses the scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts, and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities, and other websites. Includes links to resources subscribed to by Grinnell College.
= Restricted resource
= Images
= Video files
= Audio files
= Scholarly articles
= Quantitative data
= Newspapers
= Highly recommended

Kevin Engel
Science Librarian
Tel: 641-269 4234
Or, request a Library Lab. Kevin will get in touch with you to set up an appointment to meet.