There are many benefits when it comes to using the Ashford University Library; the Ashford University Library is a digital library that a student can access at any time of the day. It is also a scholarly resource. Like a public library a user has access to books, magazines journals and multimedia. The difference between a library and the Ashford University Library is that all the books, magazines, journals and multimedia have been converted into digital formats and stored into databases allowing the user easy access them by going to Ashford University webpage.
The differences between scholarly resources and popular resources are that scholarly resource is “information that has been examined by scholarly experts in the field, scholarly analysis, description or evaluation of events and ideas, primary sources of information about the views of a scholarly community” (Upenn.edu 2014) meaning that the books, magazines journals and multimedia has been verified by the experts in their field of study to be true and accurate. Examples would be American Journal of Sociology, and Philosophy and Literature. With popular resources, “primary information about culture and society, general information and commentary about political, economic and cultural events, current statistical information of general interest and popular opinions and beliefs. (Upenn.edu 2014) With popular resources they do not have any citations, the authors are not scholars they are journalists, and/or amateur writers. Examples of this work would be Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, and Time Magazine.
Key things to remember when searching for sources within the Ashford University Library are that the user has to identify what they want to search, meaning that the Ashford University Library database won’t search for long sentences or phrases. The user will have to type in key phrases for the database to locate information on the topic being researched. Another thing for the