Overview

Credo Online Reference Service, Academic Core Collection offers authoritative reference content through a one-stop search platform. The user-friendly interface is ideal for students starting their research, or learning about the research process during information literacy instruction. With hundreds of searchable, full-text titles, the collection is curated to address the primary disciplines of higher education, including arts, humanities, social sciences, and STEM. 

The Academic Core collection has more than 900 searchable, full-text titles, with an emphasis on encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases, and reference handbooks. The title list is regularly updated to ensure the reference collection remains current. Also included are more than a 1,000 short reference videos, more than 500,000 high-resolution art images, photographs, and maps across all subject areas. The equivalent print price of the books in Credo Reference: Academic Core is more than $130,000.

Subject coverage

 Art, business, education, food & beverage, geography, history, language, law, literature, medicine, music, philosophy, psychology, religion, science, social sciences and technology. 

Key features

• Research Quick Tips: Concise, informative videos embedded throughout the platform to cultivate information literacy skills while students research. Subjects covered include selecting and narrowing a topic, evaluating sources, boolean operators, and more. 
• Federated search: Credo Reference: Academic Core allows for the seamless integration of federated search results from a library’s other licensed e-resources.
• Summary articles: 11,000+ summary articles curated for pre-search and topic exploration incorporate existing library database results directly, enabling users to gain background information, then have direct links to subject-specific journal/monograph databases for deeper content — great for background research, discovering library resources, and building keyword vocabulary.
• Mind Map: A visualization tool to help users discover connections between and across topics. This feature is embeddable in course pages, LibGuides, and websites.
• Pro/Con: A featured content category for helping students locate reliable reference materials on issues of real-time importance. Highly respected publishers like ProCon.org, The Conversation, the AllSides Red Blue Dictionary, and Facts On File’s Issues & Controversies regularly add and update entries, bringing authority and accuracy to students’ current events-related information needs.
• Embeds: Credo allows users to embed reference content in their institution’s learning management system, virtual learning environment, or other guides/websites. Any article (or Mind Map) may be embedded, including those with images, audio, or videos. This helps foster faculty collaboration while also bringing usage and awareness of the institution’s valued library e-resources.
• Permalinks: Record URLs make it easy for researchers to return to previously viewed pages and allow users to create “custom collections on the fly.”
• Citation management: Users can conveniently cite entries in MLA, Chicago, APA, and Harvard formats.
• Key Concepts: Relevant terms are displayed within search results to help users identify the focus of each article and provide guidance for additional keywords related to their topic.
• Curated LibGuides: Popular subject guides curate foundational knowledge to help students explore research topics and support faculty building supplemental resources for their courses - https://credoreference.libguides.com/
• Primary Sources in Credo LibGuide: Easily point students to the many primary source materials available in Credo Reference: Academic Core. Nearly 2,000 primary source documents—including 75 videos—can be found in addition to our image collections, which contain more than 200,000 examples of original art and antiquities. This guide contains links to 650 entries across 40+ titles, as well as links to all of the books that contain primary source materials.
• Integration options: Content can be embedded into LibGuides or any LMS that supports iFrame, including Canvas, D2L, Moodle, and Blackboard. All titles have MARC records and are indexed in the major discovery systems.
• Responsive design: The platform ensures a smooth user experience on any type of device.
• Google Drive integration: Libraries can now authenticate their Credo Reference: Academic Core users with Google Authenticator, while users (via Google Authenticator or through their personal Gmail accounts) can save entries to Google Docs.
• Accessible content: Audio files and dictation of text content (downloadable in MP3 format) improve accessibility and provide different avenues for students to absorb information. Text content is translated into 100+ languages, helping learners of all backgrounds access reference material.

Further information

Product website with further information, including title list.