General Encyclopedia vs. Subject Encyclopedia

While you are either trying to Narrow Your Topic or find Keywords, look up your topic in an encyclopedia. This will assist you in developing a research question that addresses a focused issue within the broader topic.

An encyclopedia is a publication that provides explanatory articles of varying length. They are useful for gathering background information. Sometimes dozens, or hundreds, of authors write articles for an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias can be one volume or multiple volume sets. They are organized alphabetically like a dictionary or the index may be the last volume of the set.  The index lists the volume and page number with a colon between. For example, if you look up apple, the index would tell you to go to Volume A, page 27-35 (A:27-35).

 

There are two types of encyclopedias:

 

1. General encyclopedias include articles on nearly any topic, i.e. all fields of knowledge. World Book is an example of a general encyclopedia.

 

 

 

 

 

2. Subject encyclopedias focus on a single subject or discipline, usually providing more in-depth discussions than general encyclopedias. They can cover very broad subject areas, such as The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, or very specific subjects, such as The Encyclopedia of Psychology. 

 

 

 

 

 

Both types of encyclopedias a kept in the Reference Area. Books in the Reference area are arranged by call number.

• To locate the call number for a book, look it up in the library catalog (One Search).
• The books are shelved apha-numerically by call number.  The call number is located on the spine of the book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Use the index at the end of the encyclopedia to help locate an article on your topic within the encyclopedia.
• If an encyclopedia set is made-up of more than one volume, then the index generally will be found at the back of the last volume within the set.