Reference Materials at NYU Libraries

Credo Reference is an electronic full-text database for discovering reference sources. Through Credo, NYU Libraries subscribes to almost 3500 dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauri, manuals, and handbooks. These sources are especially helpful at the beginning of a research project, or whenever you want to explore what’s known about a topic. NYU Libraries provides Credo access to all active students, faculty, and staff. You can access Credo from anywhere via the Databases tab on the Libraries website. 

Credo supports a basic and advanced keyword search as well as the ability to browse by title, subject, and topic. There are filters for date, subject, publisher, and media type (e.g. images).

If you’re just getting started, try entering a name or search term. Results will display the name of the entry and the source that the entry came from. It’s important to consider if the source of a reference entry is appropriate for your project.

Above is a Credo results page for the individual, Anna Freud. Here are some features of this results page to look out for:

• At the top of the image, you will see the entry deemed most relevant and a snippet from the entry.
• Below that highlighted entry, you will see additional hits in the "Articles" tab.
• Next to "Articles," you will see other media types ("Images," "More Library Resources") that are available or searchable through Credo.
• In the right hand column, you will see a "Mind Map" interactive visualization that allows you to explore related concepts. This is autogenerated and attempts to present terms that appear near each other in Credo content.
• Below the Mind Map, you can filter by date via a slider or return to the Advanced Search to add additional filters or terms. 

Credo’s Mind Map feature can be helpful for visualizing the connections between topics and people. The Mind Map will appear on the results page for topics with significant coverage, but you can also access it from the menu bar. You can add additional concepts to the Mind Map, and Credo will try to find relationships between selected entries. 

Credo allows you to search within specific titles. All Credo titles are hyperlinked and explorable as an ebook. References are linked back to the library’s catalog, allowing you to jump between the database and our local holdings. Credo also displays related articles and results from the catalog, WorldCat, and other subscription databases. This contributes to a dynamic search environment that helps you explore a wide array of materials at once.