OneSearch is a great tool for searching almost all of the library's collections at once, but you may want to do a more refined or narrow search. Searching a subject database can be a good way to narrow your search. The SSU Library has over 170 article databases. These databases may be useful for your research.
Citation index to agriculture literature, including animal & veterinary sciences, entomology, plant sciences, wine, forestry, aquaculture & fisheries, farming & farming systems, agricultural economics, extension & education, food & human nutrition, and earth & environmental sciences (National Agricultural Library / NAL).
A full-text database covering agriculture, ecosystem ecology, energy, renewable energy sources, natural resources, marine & freshwater science, geography, pollution & waste management, environmental technology, environmental law, public policy, and more.
Offers well-researched information covering all aspects of human impact to the environment with scholarly, government and general-interest titles including content on the environmental effects of individuals, corporations and local/national governments, and what can be done at each level to minimize these effects (via Ebsco).
You may decide to include a scholarly/academic article in your project. As you move through your academic career you will almost certainly need to locate and use academic articles in you research projects and assignments.
Empirical, scholarly, or academic usually refers to peer-reviewed articles published in academic journals. These articles may be empirical articles, that specifically report on some type of research or study that the authors have conducted. It will include a hypothesis, a methods section, and results in addition to other sections. Other scholarly/academic articles, like literature reviews, might review a number of other research articles to provide a sense of the current scholarly knowledge on a given topic.
Here's a brief video that explains peer-review:
While some scholarly articles are available on the open web, many others are "pay-walled" and require database access. Using the library databases to locate your academic articles will help you avoid the pay walls. While there are several different approaches you could take to search the library for peer-reviewed articles, the library's OneSearch is a good place to start. Using OneSearch you can locate resources with a basic keyword search and limit your results to peer-reviewed articles.
*For help with Keywords, check out this library tutorial video.
There are other places to search for scholarly articles. Google Scholar is an immense database of citations for scholarly articles. If you're new to Google Scholar, here are some handy search tips. If you find something in Google Scholar that is not available in the SSU library, you can always request it through Inter library loan.
Scholarly/Academic articles are a bit different from popular articles like those found in newspapers or magazines. They can be challenging to read if you are not already familiar with them. Here are some resources that will help you navigate and analyze these types of scholarly sources.
Hunter College Anatomy of a Scholarly Article
Wesleyan University Anatomy of a Journal Article