Subject encyclopedias, handbooks and overviews are scholarly works written by experts on a variety of topics. Articles appearing in subject encyclopedias are written by selected expert scholars who typically are renown for their specialization in the topic . Subject encyclopedia can help you locate:
- an overview of your selected topic that is more specialized than what you would find in general encyclopedias
- a discussion of how scholars have approached, explored, and debated the topic over time (for examples for historians: historiography)
- words, phrases, names, dates, and events that can be used as keywords when searching a database
- detailed bibliographies in articles to find other sources (both primary and secondary)
- additional cross-references to find related topics
- authoritative content that is reliable versus what you might find on an open edited source like wikipedia