Library Resources for the Fall Semester
Whether you are a returning student or new to campus, the BU Libraries are here to help you start the fall semester strong.
The BU Libraries’ expert librarians and our array of resources can help you dive into your classes, get you back into your study habit, maintain a schoolwork-life balance, and develop new research skills. Explore the list below to learn about just some of the tools, workshops, and supports available to you.
Get Started
Use BU Libraries How-To Guides to get started with the research process and research more effectively. Whether you need guidance on choosing a research topic, finding sources and databases, or writing your paper, BU Libraries’ guides can help you get a head start on research papers and projects.
Get Organized
Use a citation manager to make citing, storing, and organizing references easy. Citation managers, also called reference managers, save your references to books, articles, movies, and other sources in one place, and help you organize those references as you find them. Citation mangers can format bibliographies in multiple citation styles, insert in-text citations into the body of a document, and share references with others.
The BU Libraries make several citation managers available to the BU community for free. Learn more about each to choose the one will work best for you.
If you’re looking for help with citing and citations styles, visit the BU Libraries Citing Your Sources guide.
Level up your research
Optimize your search strategy in BU Libraries Search. BU Libraries Search provides a single place to search for a wide variety of academic material provided by the BU Libraries, including books and ebooks, journals and ejournals, scores, video and audio recordings, and other items in the BU collection. The BU Libraries offers tutorials and FAQ’s you help get the most out of BU Libraries Search. Review basic search tips, familiarize yourself with Advanced Search, and learn how to work with search results.
Attend a library workshop. Librarians are hosting several workshops throughout the semester to on a wide range of research tools and strategies. Whether you’re looking to hone your text and data mining skills, learn how to navigate financial or business databases, or get started with visualization literacy, our workshop series has something for everyone.
Ask for Help
Schedule a one-on-one appointment with a librarian. BU Librarians are here to help you at every step of the research process. Librarians can help you develop a search strategy and find scholarly sources, show you how to use resources and tools, and answer questions about the research process.
You can get help at BU Libraries locations or visit askalibrarian.bu.edu to call, chat, text, email, or set up an appointment with a librarian.