If you're doing college-level work, your professors will probably prefer you to cite documents, articles published in refereed journals, and researchers at other colleges and universities.  Although the government documents and official publications will be easy to find, dissertations and scholarly articles by fire service may be hard to come up with.  That's because so many fire service authors who want to share their expertise or opinions simply don't write for academic audiences. 

The NETC LRC's "Higher Education" page ( http://www.usfa.fema.gov/nfa/higher_ed/index.shtm ) and guide at http://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/library/research/index.html may be of help.   If you plan on doing medical research, you might want to read "Getting Started With Research" at http://www.jems.com/article/technology/how-get-started-ems-research .

Check out the USFA's tips on fire research, especially http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/coffee-break/is/is_2009_6.pdf and http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/coffee-break/is/is_2008_2.pdf and http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/coffee-break/is/is_2009_7.pdf to better understand what you're finding...and what you're NOT.

The OFPC/Academy Library's PowerPoint on Intro to Research Methods (used for Fire Officer III) may be of interest:

Intro to research methods 9-15-14.pptx and handout Handout Recommended Websites DR.pdf

We also have a 14-minute screencast of tips for college students at http://screencast.com/t/iWs29WMxX

You may find Google Scholar to be helpful.  It is a subset of the regular Google search tool index, designed to locate full-text journal articles, technical reports, preprints, theses, books, and other documents, including selected Web pages rated as “scholarly.”  Its strongest areas are the sciences (esp. medicine and the social sciences.)  

This is an excerpt from the Google Scholar site:

"What is Google Scholar?
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research.

Features of Google Scholar

• Search diverse sources from one convenient place 
• Find articles, theses, books, abstracts or court opinions 
• Locate the complete document through your library or on the web
• Learn about key scholarly literature in any area of research 

How are documents ranked?
Google Scholar aims to rank documents the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each document, where it was published, who it was written by, as well as how often and how recently it has been cited in other scholarly literature."

Knowing how many times an item has been cited by others may not sound important, but in the academic world it's a big deal!

Summon Search 

Summon is a search tool which some academic libraries are putting on their sites.  Because it is a "unified discovery service" and not an engine like Google & Google Scholar, you'll get different results.  There are online materials Summon finds that can't be located any other way.   Some of the hits will turn up materials which require college ID login before allowing access.  Others are in the public domain, and finding them may be well worth your trouble!  After your initial query, use the options to narrow results (by document type, date, peer-reviewed, etc.)  Try the following links -- make sure you click on the tab or search box for Summon! 

http://libguides.wpi.edu/fire

https://www.library.cornell.edu/summon 

http://library.buffalostate.edu/

http://www.library.ubc.ca/summon/

Finding what's in library collections

See other pages of this wiki for specifics, but if you could ONLY look in ONE place, www.WorldCat.org  would be it!  You can find who has what, from your local public library, nearby college library, the National Fire Academy...even the OFPC Library in Montour Falls.  Some libraries -- like ours -- even include direct links so that you can jump directly to that item in their local catalog. 

Finding Articles

Don't skip the subscription databases (mentioned in the page on Free online fire journals ) that may be accessed through your public or college library, the NY State Library or the NY Public Library!

• Your public library will give you passwords to enter through their database portal, and also help you get materials on interlibrary loan
• many State Library's e-journal collections and databases can be accessed with just a NYS DMV license or photo ID number.  
• Anyone in NY State can also register online for a NY Public Library PIN & password.  See NYPL's list of databases by clicking HERE.  

HOT TIP: Because these libraries may not choose to pay for the same databases, coverage and content varies.  

Peer-reviewed or refereed journals 

Your professors may insist that you only cite articles which have been through this process, which generally means they have been approved for publication by subject specialists.   While not all scholarly journals go through the peer-review process, generally a peer-reviewed journal is also scholarly.

• Again, NETC LRC to the rescue!  Go to http://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/library/research/topics/index.html and you'll find finding aids for peer-reviewed literature in fire and EMS fields.
• A few of the NY State Library's journal indexes can be searched by databases which have a filter for "Peer Reviewed."  JSTOR, Proquest (ABI/Inform, Proquest newspapers), Ebscohost’s Academic  and the Wilson databases have a "peer reviewed" check box to invoke this filter. Remember that even though a particular journal is peer reviewed, an individual article in that journal may not be.  News items, editorials, etc. often don't go through the peer review process even when in a peer-reviewed journal. 
• To  find a full list of refereed or peer-reviewed journals you can use a directory called “Ulrich’s” (a large library would have it).  We have  access to the online Ulrich’s online version through the NY Public Library.  (See above if you don’t already have a card.) For instructions on using Ulrich’s online to find peer-reviewed journals, see
  http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1T4GZEZ_en-GBUS287US287&q=directory+of+peer-reviewed+journals&start=10&sa=N
• You could do some checking on the Internet to find lists under specific disciplines. (For example, http://www.eurekalert.org/links.php?jrnl=A has a list of science publications.  Click on alphabet letters.)
• See "Summon Search," above.  

• International  Fire Service Journal of Leadership and Management (Quarterly, began in 2007)
• Fire Risk Management  (Monthly, supposedly peer-reviewed???)
• Fire Technology (Quarterly, formerly published by NFPA, now Springer)
• Journal of Fire Sciences (Quarterly)
• International Journal of Emergency Services 
• International Journal of Wildland Fire
• International Journal on Engineering Performance-Based Fire Codes

There are also some peer-reviewed titles which are disaster management, forensics, prehospital/emergency medical care, and homeland security.  Although they occasionally have articles of interest to the fire service, but I wouldn’t call them “fire service”. 

Don't forget to use the databases available through your college, NY State Library or NY Public Library to find articles relating to the fire service in other journals, like the "Journal of Forensic Sciences," "Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine," "Journal of Applied Physiology," "Engineering Failure Analysis," and so on!

Finding Dissertations & Theses

Some colleges and universities actively encourage degree candidates to post their work online.  (University of Maryland, the Naval Postgraduate School and Worcester Polytechnic Institute come to mind for fire research.)   Some are available on interlibrary loan, and a few are really only available to those who'll pay for the privilege.

Here's some very helpful assistance from Ed Metz at the NETC Library in Emmitsburg: 

"The NETC Library has recently implemented a convenient means for the fire and emergency services community to search for rigorously researched, academic material in the form of PH.D dissertations and Masters theses.  The First Responder Dissertations and Theses Search is the most comprehensive platform available anywhere online specializing in material from the fire and emergency services domain of knowledge.  We've also recently given renewed emphasis to searching out and acquiring these materials for our collection and we'd like to ask that you help us get the word out to potentially interested individuals or programs about donating copies of these resources to our library as they are published so that we can continue growing this valuable discovery tool. We hope that this resource will serve both the Fire and Emergency Services Higher Education program stakeholders as well as the wider fire service community..." 

Citing What You Found and Used

You will probably be told what style to use in preparing your bibliography and footnotes. 

• If you're using a recent version of Microsoft Word, click on the "References" tab for help managing citations, citing sources and writing bibliographies.  

• There are bibliography manager programs which you can buy if you're working with a large number of citations and really need a database manager to organize them.  These include BibTex, RefMan, RefWorks, ProCite, and EndNote. Your college may even be able to give you access to these free or at student prices.
• EasyBib is a free, Web-based utility that lets you build a correct citation online using prompts. Your choice of the latest editions of Chicago, APA and MLA styles, with style guides.  There also offer free guides you can use.
• If you are using a recent version of Word, you'll find it has a reference tool that will even let you import references from the Web.  (Articles from Highbeam should import easily.) Here's how it works: 

Click the style that you want to use for the citation and source.
For example, social sciences documents usually use the MLA or APA styles for citations and sources.

Click at the end of the sentence or phrase that you want to cite.
On the References tab, in the Citations & Bibliography group, click Insert Citation.

Do one of the following:
To add the source information, click Add New Source.
To add a placeholder, so that you can create a citation and fill in the source information later, click Add new placeholder. A question mark appears next to placeholder sources in Source Manager.
Begin to fill in the source information by clicking the arrow next to Type of source.
For example, your source might be a book, a report, or a Web site.

Fill in the bibliography information for the source.
To add more information about a source, click the Show All Bibliography Fields check box.

Confused? 

• Here is a link to some easy-to-understand, short videos to walk you through the "How and Why" of citation  

• There's a very basic, easy-to-read article on copyright and citation by Mike Rubin, "The Write Stuff--Part 5: Protected Material. The boundaries of using other people's work" 

Are you a hardcore researcher or into social media?  Try              

• Zotero citation manager: Zotero is a Firefox extension that allows you to easily keep track of your sources - books, articles, webpages, etc. It will also create citations and a works cited section for your paper. With many different citation styles included, and the ability to share your information from one computer to another, Zotero can make citing your sources and creating bibliographies much easier.
• Mendeley is a free reference manager and academic social network that integrates desktop software and a Web-based social research network. It can help you organize your research, collaborate with others online, and discover the latest research.  Mendeley will automatically generate bibliographies, easily import papers from other research software, find relevant papers, and let you access your papers from anywhere online and read papers on an iPhone.