Getting started with your fire and emergency services research project

Need help researching a topic? We can help!

We'll provide a brief, immediate response to ready-reference questions.

Or, for more in-depth research needs we'll prepare a customized bibliography for you spanning a wide variety of media formats. We prepare most of these to send out via email. They'll include items available online as well as citations to others that we may be able to help you obtain via interlibrary Loan if you are not on the National Emergency Training Center campus. Get results now and check out our list of frequently requested research topics.

Call or email us and let us know how we can help. Our toll-free number is 800-638-1821.

Online searching: resources and tips

Expanding, narrowing and refining your results

Enter your keywords or phrases representing synonyms or related terms for a topic of interest. Try to use a variety of keywords since additional items on your topic may use different terms.

Expand your results set (Boolean OR): If you want a broad search then separate each term with OR (making sure OR is capitalized) and the catalog will return all citations that contain any one or more of the terms you list.
For example, entering: flashover OR backdraft yields over 450 records where either one or both terms are present.
Narrow your results set (Boolean AND): When you join terms with the Boolean AND operator in a search, it narrows your results to only records containing all of your search terms. (The catalog automatically applies the Boolean AND operator).
For example, entering: flashover AND backdraft returns about 40 records where both terms are present in each record.
Refine your results further: Use quotation marks in order to find records containing an exact phrase.
For example, maybe you want to know what items relate specifically to smoke explosion types of backdrafts. Entering: “smoke explosion” returns more than a half dozen hits where this exact phrase appears.

Searching for Executive Fire Officer applied research projects

The Executive Fire Officer (EFO) applied research projects are written by individual students after they leave campus as part of their class assignment. These research papers are available for in-house use by library visitors, for checkout by National Emergency Training Center users, and for loan to off-campus users via interlibrary loan.

The library only retains EFO papers that received a grade of 3.0 or better. All other papers are entered into the library catalog with an abstract only. If you would like to get a copy of a paper for which the library has only retained an abstract, you'll need to contact the author directly. Most EFO papers published since 1998 are now available to download or read online in their entirety. You'll see links in our online catalog citations to these papers as they are available in digits. There is a backlog in scanning current year papers so the most recent titles may still be unavailable online.

Style guides

Style guides show you how to properly cite your information sources. There are four main style guides: American Psychological Association, Modern Language Association, Chicago Manual of Style, and Turabian.

APA (American Psychological Association): Publication manual of the American Psychological Association
Call Number: BF 76.7 .P976 2001 View library citation
Library Quick Start APA Guide PDF 263 KB
MLA (Modern Language Association): MLA handbook for writers of research papers
Search for holdings in library near you
Cite it right: the SourceAid guide to citation, research, and avoiding plagiarism: Search for holdings in library near you

Quick examples of how to cite using APA, Chicago and other styles

Step 1: Clearly define your topic or "information need"

Start with a broad area of interest. Example: “Community risk reduction efforts.”
Narrow down your topic. Example: “Residential fire alarms.”
Focus on something specific. Example: "The efficacy of a department standard operating procedure (SOP) for the automatic residential fire alarm activation response".
Write a “working” Thesis. Example: "An SOP for the automatic residential fire alarm activation response that has an established purpose, scope, and clearly defined procedures can have a very positive impact on community risk reduction efforts."
Note that this does not have to be your final thesis, just an idea to get the research process going. You can change and modify your thesis along the way.

Other things to consider:

How much do you know about the topic?
Is the topic manageable? Too much information - narrow your topic. Not enough information - expand your topic.
Time needed – If your topic is too time-consuming: choose another topic or narrow your current topic.
Availability of information – are all the sources easily accessible (all on-hand, interlibrary loan time limits, etc.)

Step 2: Collect / find information

How much information will you need? That will depend on the reason you need the information. If you are writing a paper, what size does your paper need to be?
What kind of information do you need?
What level of information do you need? Scholarly information, popular information, both?
How current does the information need to be?
Plan your search strategy. Learn the subject terminology and the keywords associated with your topic. A good way to learn the appropriate subject terms for your search in the library online catalog is to enter a keyword search and on the result page look thru the list of “Topic” terms that appear in the left side of the screen.
Identify Information Sources -what type of sources will you use for your topic?

Reference tools: there are a wide variety of reference tools found in both print and online formats. Often, you'll find some ideally suited for your topic. Reference materials point you to other sources of information.

Encyclopedias, handbooks, codes and guidebooks are among the many resources that fall into this category.

Check out this list of reference texts for the fire service.

Books: try searching the library catalog. Go to the General Keyword search link, enter your term(s) and choose Books from the Document Types drop-down menu.

You can also try browsing our stacks. You'll find our fire science related books organized in general terms as follows:

Building Safety, Design, Construction: TH1-TH9000
Electrical: TK9-TK1078
Emergency Medicine, EMT, Paramedics: RC86-RC87
Fire Chemistry: TP265
Fire Codes: KF3975-KF3976
Fire Combustion, Ignition: QD500-QD516
Fire Extinguishing Agents: TP266
Fire Service Hydraulics: TC160-TC163
Fire Fighters, Protection, Prevention, Tactics: TH9100-TH9598
HAZMAT Codes and Regulations: KF3945-KF3964
Risk Analysis: T174-T175
Wildland Firefighting: SD420-SD421

Periodical Literature: Journals, newsletters, and magazines are all valuable sources of information. The library's catalog is a unique guide to this periodical literature with citations on fire, emergency response, natural disaster, and homeland security topics going back to the early 1970s. Library staff index nearly 5,000 newly published articles each year, from scores of professional journals, magazines and newsletters across the country and internationally. Try using the library catalog and limit your search this time to Journal Articles. Any citations you find will be available at the National Emergency Training Center library. Alternatively you can take any citations you find to your nearest public library and they can help you obtain the materials either thru their own print or electronic holdings or via interlibrary loan.

Reports, dissertations, proceedings: can be found in a wide variety of formats, including print and electronic. Our library catalog is also a great place to begin searching for government documents and reports from think tanks and professional organizations of all kinds as well as papers already published by students in the Executive Fire Officer program. You can use the checkboxes on our advanced search page to begin your search for these types of materials.

You may also want to go just enter a General Keyword search and limit your results by type for reports, dissertations, proceedings and other materials by choosing from the choices that appear on the left side of your see arch result screen.

The Internet: You can find some great information on the Internet, but you must always carefully evaluate the web pages you find. Educational sites (.edu), US Government sites (.gov) are often reliable sources for information. Search engines like USA.gov or the library's Google Custom Search Engine.

Step 3: Evaluate your information

The following are the 5 evaluation criteria used in evaluating sources.

Authority:: Who is responsible for the work, and what are their credentials
Reliability:: Does the information seem accurate?
Currency:: Is the information up-to-date?
Completeness:: Is the information complete or is it just a summary of another work? Information Level? Intended Audience?
Relevancy:: Does the information source answer your questions?

Step 4: Use and/or Do Something With the Information

Write the paper or give the presentation. Organize your Information - using an outline is always a good idea. Download the NETC Library Writing Guide PDF 15 KB for an easy to use template on drafting an essay.

Step 5: Use the information ethically and legally – cite your sources

A citation is a reference to an exact Information Source where the author got his/her info. Cite your sources to:

Back up your research with facts.
Allow others to follow your research.
Give credit to the original author(s).
Avoid plagiarism.

Plagiarism is the unacknowledged inclusion, in work submitted for credit, of someone else’s words, ideas, or data. The failure to identify any source, published or unpublished, copyrighted or non copyrighted from which information, terms, phrases, or concepts have been taken, constitutes plagiarism.

Citations contain the following minimum information:

Title of the information source / work.
Author.
Publishing information.
Web address (if applicable).

Sample book citation for a reference list in APA format:

Taylor, M. A. (2008). “Jumping fire: A smokejumper's memoir of fighting wildfire”. New York, NY: Harcourt, Inc.

Sample journal article citation for a reference list in APA format:

Castagna, J. (2008). Wildfire maps aid FEMA mission.“ Fire Engineering, 161”(5), 123.