To find scholarly sources:
When searching library databases, look for a checkbox to narrow your results to Scholarly, Peer Reviewed or Peer Refereed publications.
To find out more about an author:
Google the author's name and search for biographical information like a curriculum vitae and work history. Many databases will provide a link to other publications by the same author.
To find out more about an article:
ProQuest databases provide "referenced" and "cited" numbers. These numbers indicate how many resources the author referenced in their article, and how many others have cited this article. Google Scholar offers a "cited by" function that tells you how often the article has been cited by other researchers.
To evaluate internet sources:
The internet is a great place to find both scholarly and popular sources, but it's especially important to ask questions about authorship and publication when you're evaluating online resources. If it's unclear who exactly created or published certain works online, look for About pages on the site for more information, or search for exact quotations from the text in Google (using quotation marks) to see if you can find other places where the work has been published.