Workshops: 3. Search for Sources

Read or view the materials listed below and then take the quiz (you won't be able to answer the quiz questions without doing the readings/tutorials). After completing the quiz you'll see a Certificate of Completion showing your grade and name that can be emailed or printed as needed.

Questions to consider as you work through the materials below:

• Why won't I find the "perfect" scholarly journal article on my topic?
• What search tools likely contain useful and reliable scholarly information for my academic writing?
• How do I format my search to find results that contain an exact phrase of 2+ words?
• How can I access full-text journal articles not available in the library's collections?

There is no one way to search the literature to find the most important sources related to your topic. However, there are some steps and habits of mind you can use to make the process more effective and efficient.

1. Spend some time brainstorming both possible narrower or related aspects of your topic, and developing a list of possible search terms: Brainstorm your topic and background reading with Wikipedia.
2. Approach your topic with an open and critical mind: be mindful of your own worldview and how innate human biases can blind us to some things.
   • Confirmation Bias (and How to Minimize It)
3. Give some thought to what kinds of sources will be useful to you. While scholarly/peer-reviewed journal articles and books (sometimes called scholarly monographs) will make up the bulk of your sources, some topics may lend themselves to other types of sources such as government or non-governmental reports and white papers, data sets or statistics, and more: Publication Types. See also: Finding & working with Scholarly Sources.
4. What you type into a search box will depend both on your topic and what search tool (database) you are using. For example, if using the OneSearch (which searches many collections across all disciplines at once) to look for sources on stress among nurses, start with a search like this: stress and nursing. However, if using the CINAHL database (searches just the nursing literature) instead, you might not need to include 'nursing' in the search at all. Here are some general search tips:
   • ONLY type in words or phrases that concisely describe main concepts, with and between each concept (does not need to be capitalized).
     • opioids and treatment
     • diversity and Microsoft and training
   • Put double quotes around exact phrases of 2+ words.
     • “diversity training”
     • "Black Lives Matter"
     • "human resources management" and "risk mitigation"
   • Craft multiple searches to see what works and find the best results
     • opioids and teenagers and prevention
     • "prescription drugs" and adolescents and prevention
     • "opioid epidemic" and adolescents and "prevention programs"
5. ​​Try multiple search tools.
   • ​OneSearch (search box on the library home page) can be useful in many contexts, but isn't always the most accurate way to search the literature. 
   • Explore the Subject Guides ("All Library Guides" link in lower left of library home page) for relevant discipline-specific search tools and portals into reliable open Web sources.
   • Search inside the full-text of EBook content via EBook Central.
   • Explore non-traditional sources, such as:
     • Statistics and Data Sources
     • Primary Source Material
6. Use Reference Mining to explore the relevant literature
   • Reference Mining is the process of looking carefully at the list of cited references at the end of a relatively recent journal article directly related to your topic. Chances are, the author has done some of the leg work in identifying reliable, relevant sources and listed then in their bibliography. If you see something useful in a bibliography, copy-paste the title and use the library's OneSearch to locate it.
7. If you find an article or book chapter you need that is not accessible via the library, you can request  via Inter-library Loan (note: you cannot request entire books).

You can practice strategies with these steps:

TOPIC: If you don't have your own research question/topic, try this one: What role does ethnic and/or socioeconomic status have on the risk of elementary education students becoming victims of cyberbullying?

1. In a Word document or piece of paper, create a list of major concepts involved in your chosen research topic (focus on the words or phrases that concisely describe those concepts)
2. If there are possible synonyms or relevant terms, add those to your list.
3. Using the strategies described in the main video and the text above, write down at least 2 searches you could try, each using at least some different search terms.
4. Select 2+ search tools/databases from the library or the open web to try your searches out. Tweak your searches if needed using any terminology you notice showing up on result titles or abstracts.
5. See if you can locate relevant scholarly and non-scholarly sources.
6. To practice reference mining, use the icons as noted in the main video, or go into the full-text and look at the bibliography of a relevant scholarly journal article to see if other useful sources might be listed there.

If you want to learn some of the details of OneSearch, go there, try out one of your searches tweak the search as needed based on the results, and then explore some of the limit and save/citation options described in the main video above. 

Work through the readings and tutorials above, and take this quiz:

• Quiz for Library Workshop 3: Search for Sources. After submission, you'll see a Certificate of Submission, which can be emailed or printed out as needed.
• [Note that without a careful review of the readings and videos above you will probably not be able to answer many of the questions]