Chemistry: Reference Works

Scholarly reference works are useful for the following:

• An overview of a topic
• Topic ideas for a paper topic or narrowing your topic
• Finding keywords for searches 
• Bibliographies for further research

Reference works are good starting points for research, but are rarely cited in research as secondary sources. 

Encyclopedias provide excellent background/overview information and are an excellent place to begin research. They contain articles written by experts for a somewhat more general audience. They provide indexes indicating scope of coverage of a topic and point to articles in which a concept will be discussed. They also provide bibliographies for further reading.