Slavic and East European Studies: Advanced Research Strategies

Browsing encyclopedias and directories can be extremely helpful when you are starting your research. This can provide you with a general understanding of your topic, as well as keywords and names, which you can then use while searching the catalogue. In addition, many encyclopedic entries have bibliographies that can often direct you to useful sources.

Many encyclopedias, directories, and dictionaries in the Slavic and East European field can be found at the Petro Jacyk Resource Centre, located on the 3rd floor of Robarts Library.

You can use the library catalogue to find encyclopedias and other reference books on your topic. From there, you can:

1. Click on Catalogue.

2. Type in your search term, followed by 'and encyclopedia' or directory or dictionary (for example, Ukraine and encyclopedia). Leave Anywhere in the drop-down menu (see screen shot in steps #1 and #2).
3. Click on Search (step #3).
4. Here are the search results for 'Ukraine and encyclopedia'. You can locate your items and its available right below its title. As you can see on the screen shot in the red bars, both volumes of Ukraine: a concise encyclopedia are located in Robarts both in the Petro Jacyk Resource Centre and in Stacks. Go there and grab the book from the shelf. Keep in mind that all the books located in the Petro Jacyk Resource Centre are for the library use only. 

Note: the system searches for singular and plural form of the words, so if you enter encyclopedias or encyclopedia, you will receive the same results.