Credo Reference: Academic Core

Credo Reference: Academic Core

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Credo Reference: Academic Core

Universities & Colleges

About This Product:

Credo Reference enhances the research experience through authoritative reference content and a one-stop exploratory search platform that drives usage of all of your trusted library resources. The user-friendly interface is ideal for students starting their research or learning about the research process during information literacy instruction. With hundreds of searchable, full-text titles from the world’s foremost publishers, Credo Reference covers every major subject.

Credo Reference: Academic Core is curated to address the primary disciplines of higher education, including arts, humanities, social sciences, and STEM.  A true academic alternative to Wikipedia, this collection offers world-class reference both to beginning researchers and to faculty building introductory courses.

Academic Core—available via subscription—is the ultimate launching point for student research and a premier reference solution for all academic libraries. 

Click here for a list of reference titles included in Credo Reference: Academic Core.

Get a FREE TRIAL of Credo Reference: Academic Core.

FACT SHEET (PDF)

  • Easy-to-use interface: The intuitive design allows researchers at all levels to easily navigate the platform and discover the information they need.
  • Exceptional reference content from the best academic publishers: With 900+ searchable, full-text titles from many of the world’s most respected publishers of reference, Credo Reference: Academic Core places particular emphasis on subject encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases, and reference handbooks. Also included are more than 500,000 high-resolution art images, photographs, and maps across all subject areas. The thoughtfully curated content is recognized by top sources, such as Choice, Recommended College List, RUSA, Doody’s Core Titles, Booklist, Library Journal, and many more. This title list is regularly updated to ensure your reference collection remains current. The equivalent print price of the books in Credo Reference: Academic Core is more than $130,000.
  • Multimedia content: More than 2.2 million full-text entries are searchable alongside thousands of images and audio files.
  • Information literacy support: Features like Mind Map, Research Quick Tips, Key Concepts, summary articles, curated Pro/Con entries, and more help educators foster essential research skills at the point of need or during library instruction sessions.
  • Discover more: Search results include connections to your institution’s other research databases, maximizing usage of all of your library’s trusted resources.

  • Research Quick Tips: Credo Reference: Academic Core features concise, informative videos embedded throughout the platform to cultivate information literacy skills while students research. Subjects covered include selecting and narrowing a topic, evaluating sources, boolean operators, and more.
  • Federated search: Credo Reference: Academic Core allows for the seamless integration of federated search results from your library’s licensed e-resources, leading students directly to deeper subject-focused research and maximizing usage and awareness of your entire library.
  • Summary articles: 11,000+ summary articles curated for pre-search and topic exploration incorporate existing library database results directly, enabling users to gain background information, then have direct links to subject-specific journal/monograph databases for deeper content—great for background research, discovering library resources, and building keyword vocabulary!
  • Mind Map: One of Credo Reference: Academic Core‘s key features, the Mind Map is a visualization tool to help users discover connections between and across topics. This feature is embeddable in course pages, LibGuides, and websites!
  • Pro/Con: Credo Reference: Academic Core‘s Pro/Con is a featured content category for helping students locate reliable reference materials on issues of real-time importance. Highly respected publishers like ProCon.org, The Conversation, the AllSides Red Blue Dictionary, and Facts On File’s Issues & Controversies regularly add and update entries, bringing authority and accuracy to students’ current events-related information needs.
  • Embeds: Credo Reference: Academic Core allows users to embed reference content in their institution’s learning management system, virtual learning environment, or other guides/websites. Any article (or Mind Map) may be embedded, including those with images, audio, or videos. This helps foster faculty collaboration while also bringing usage and awareness of the institution’s valued library e-resources.
  • Permalinks: Credo Reference: Academic Core‘s record URLs make it easy for researchers to return to previously viewed pages and allow users to create “custom collections on the fly.”
  • Citation management: With Credo Reference: Academic Core, users can conveniently cite entries in MLA, Chicago, APA, and Harvard formats.
  • Key Concepts: In Credo Reference: Academic Core, relevant terms are displayed within search results to help users identify the focus of each article and provide guidance for additional keywords related to their topic.
  • Curated LibGuides: We have created dozens of subject-specific LibGuides which can be easily imported into your own. Add Credo Reference: Academic Core reference to your LibGuides with just a few clicks.
  • Primary Sources in Credo LibGuides: Easily point students to the many primary source materials available in Credo Reference: Academic Core. Nearly 2,000 primary source documents—including 75 videos—can be found in addition to our image collections, which contain more than 200,000 examples of original art and antiquities. This guide contains links to 650 entries across 40+ titles, as well as links to all of the books that contain primary source materials.
  • Integration options: Credo Reference: Academic Core content can be embedded into LibGuides or any LMS that supports iFrame, including Canvas, D2L, Moodle, and Blackboard. All titles have MARC records and are indexed in the major discovery systems.
  • Responsive design: Credo Reference: Academic Core‘s platform ensures a smooth user experience on any type of device.
  • Google Drive integration: Libraries can now authenticate their Credo Reference: Academic Core users with Google Authenticator, while users (via Google Authenticator or through their personal Gmail accounts) can save entries to Google Docs.
  • Accessible content: Audio files and dictation of text content improve accessibility and provide different avenues for students to absorb information. Text content is translated into 100+ languages, helping learners of all backgrounds access reference material.

Rocky Mountain College: Librarians use Credo Reference: Academic Core during First-Year Experience workshops to lay a foundation of highly effective research skills.

Nazarbayev University: Credo Reference: Academic Core helps maintain students’ attention and builds their confidence in the research process during instruction sessions.

Drake University: Credo’s one-stop platform helps students brainstorm, make connections, build subject vocabulary, and explore appropriate resources when starting their research assignments.

Howard University: Spotlighting Credo Reference: Academic Core in First-Year Experience workshops leads to higher usage of library resources and improved research papers from students.

“Credo Reference is the gold standard for general reference…Most students will find it tremendously helpful.”

Library Journal

“Credo Reference has grown into an essential, online, full-text collection of reference books covering a great variety of subjects and formats…a first-rate place to visit when [students] are looking for validated sources of information…Essential. All libraries. All levels.”

Choice

“The user-friendly interface provides an excellent place for students to begin their research, or to learn about the process of doing research during information literacy instruction…especially well-suited to the beginning user population.”

The Charleston Advisor

“I’ve nicknamed Credo Reference the ‘professor-approved Wikipedia.’ I encourage students to begin all their research assignments with Credo Reference.”

Troy Espe, librarian, University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point

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