In our recent webinar on The First Year Transition: Supporting Incoming College Students with Infobase in Uncertain Times and Beyond, Lisa Hill, Product Marketing Manager, explored how Credo Reference, Writer’s Reference Center, Issues & Controversies, and World News Digest can be used to support new students entering the academic world wherever they may be located.
We received a lot of great questions from the webinar attendees, and here we share our answers. If you didn’t catch the webinar the first time, check out the recording!
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Question: How much Canadian content is available in Credo Reference?
Answer: We have two encyclopedias devoted specifically to Canada: The History of Canada from Grey House Publishing and A Brief History of Canada from Facts On File. You do have the option of requesting certain titles being suppressed from your account if you find any content irrelevant to your audience.
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Question: Would Credo Reference be useful for faculty and researchers also?
Answer: Yes. All of Credo’s more than 2 million articles are fully embeddable. When faculty members are looking to embed background information or link subject encyclopedias to their online course guides, they can filter through 80 subject areas to find the exact content applicable to them. If you’re interested in more details, we’ll be hosting a webinar on June 11 highlighting ways you can use Credo Reference and other Infobase databases with learning management systems or LibGuides.
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Question: Is it possible for a student’s “issue” not to be found in Issues & Controversies?
Answer: Of course. Issues & Controversies is expansive and comprehensive, exploring hundreds of today’s hot topics, but we can’t guarantee every possible issue is covered. We are very responsive to customer feedback, so if there is a major issue that you feel is not addressed in this database, we’d love to hear from you!
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Question: Are any of these resources “peer-reviewed”?
Answer: “Peer-reviewed” is a term that students look for when vetting academic content, and it is generally applied to journal articles. The content in Infobase’s databases generally does not come from journals, but all of it goes through a rigorous editorial process to ensure that the content meets the highest academic standards.
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Question: Is Issues & Controversies similar to Pro/Con in Credo Reference?
Answer: Pro/Con addresses a similar student need as Issues & Controversies—reliable coverage of both sides of issues of real-time importance; however, it cannot compare in pure comprehensiveness and related content curation. To put it simply, there is much, much more in Issues & Controversies.
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Question: Does World News Digest include historical perspectives of people of color?
Answer: World News Digest endeavors to capture snapshots of history and aggregate related materials that describe the real-time events of a given date. We compile editorials, news sources, and social media posts from diverse outlets and experiences, and those of people of color are represented. Visit our World News Digest sources page for an idea of the types of voices represented in our database.
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Question: Is there a citation tool in all resources demoed today?
Answer: All of the resources demoed in this webinar have citation tools although some have more citation styles than others. We encourage you to log in to the trials and explore the citations, and, as always, offer us feedback!
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Question: Can I share this trial access with my colleagues or faculty members? Do I need special permission?
Answer: No special permission is needed. Feel free to share the access across your institution (and do send us feedback if there is any!).
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Question: Does Credo Reference appear seamlessly in Primo?
Answer: Credo Reference is currently indexed on the title level. Learn more about how we work with discovery services here.
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Question: Does Credo Reference work well within EDS (EBSCO Discovery Service)?
Answer: Yes. Not only is Credo Reference indexed in EDS, you can also turn on a widget on EDS’s right rail AND you can add Credo Reference to the top of the results page under their Research Starters. See the link in the question above for more info on Discovery.
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Question: If a student copies their paper from these resources, will the LMS plagiarism detector be able to detect it?
Answer: Yes, plagiarism checkers should in most cases be able to detect offending documents, as all content has been published in print or e-formats. We encourage you to try with your own LMS plagiarism checkers to confirm.
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Question: Is access to these free trials available only via username/password? Or can we set up temporary proxy authentication?
Answer: You can request any type of authentication that you’d like for this trial period. Just let us know!
