The large number and variety of research tools available at Lehigh can be daunting to navigate. The research tool you choose will depend on the information need you have at the moment. Do you need background information on a subject that is new to you? Books are longer pieces of writing that allow an author the space to provide background on a topic, possibly in the form of a literature review. To find a book or to learn whether Lehigh has access to a specific journal, start your search with ASA, the Libraries' online catalog. Note: ASA is not the place to search for individual journal articles.
Sometimes you need information that is narrower in scope than what is typically found in a book, or you may be at the stage in your research where you want to search for individual journal articles. Maybe you need to create a statistical set or map census data. In those cases, start your search with the A-Z Database listing, which is your source for materials like scholarly articles, indexes, newspapers, primary source materials, and statistics. Video Search is the search to use when you want to limit your results to video materials. The E-journals listing provides a convenient alphabetical listing for those times when you want to locate and quickly search within a specific journal.
Two other important research tools are research guides, which librarians have prepared to help you learn skills like creating citations and Course Reserves. Faculty will often place library material on course reserve so that all the students in the class have the opportunity to access the material. Course materials may be placed on reserve in the Libraries either through a Print Reserve Request or an Electronic Reserve Request.
Lehigh Preserve is the institutional repository for Lehigh scholarship. Our goal is to preserve Lehigh scholarship and to provide a venue for open access publication. Lehigh Preserve is an excellent source for master’s theses, doctoral dissertations, faculty scholarship, and FIRE: Forum for International Research in Education, a Lehigh University published peer-reviewed, scholarly journal.