This library guide offers resources and strategies to help with research in Labor and Human Resources (LHR) and Human Resources and Employment Relations (HRER). 

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As Penn State students, you have access to all that the library has to offer whether you are living on campus or around the world. However, we realize that there is a ton of information at your fingertips and it can be hard to know how or what to even search! A great place to start is with our FIND federated search tool to locate books, articles and other resources. This is a discovery-based system that searches most of what the library owns and provides access to. It also offers options for searching beyond Penn State libraries' collections and acquiring these materials using a service known as InterLibrary Loan. FIND is a great place to get started when you are conducting research for your courses, however, it searches a rather large pool of information. Sometimes, you will get more relevant results by searching smaller pools of information. You can also search our CATALOG for specific books, journals, or films, or one or more of our DATABASES for articles and a wealth of other information.

Take a minute to think about what you would see in an academic journal. If you thought that the journal only consisted of peer-reviewed, scholarly sources, think again! Several scholarly journals have features that are non peer-reviewed such as opinion pieces, book reviews, or regular newsletters. 

There are some key indicators to tell if an article is scholarly and peer-reviewed. In general, this article is lengthy with headings and subheadings. Many times they will report on an original study, but not always. Sometimes, they can be a meta-analysis. The tutorial below should provide some guidance on how to read scholarly research.