Wk 2 – Library Research Worksheet
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Gettingstartedonaresearchprojectcanbeoverwhelming.docx
Getting started on a research project can be overwhelming (and sometimes the hardest part of the research process!). This page explores how to develop a search strategy that you can use to find the most useful information in a timely manner.
This process can be broken down into four major steps:
1. Choose a Topic
2. Identify Main Concepts & Keywords
3. Choose Databases
4. Analyze & Improve Your Results
What are you interested in and curious about? Is there a question you would like answered?
Choosing a topic you are interested in will help you remain engaged in your research. Avoid choosing a topic because you think it will be "easy," as that can backfire.
How do I choose a topic?
Watch the videos in the learning module, Where Do I Find Information, for more tips on how to select a good topic for your research.
Where Do I Find Information?
· On the Proquest Research Companion page. Click on "Find Information" at the top left.
· Under "Learning Modules" scroll down and click "Where do I find information?"
· Watch all the videos under this Learning Module.
Need Ideas for a Topic?
Here are some library databases that provide overviews of topics that can help you generate research ideas:
Credo Reference contains specialized dictionaries and encyclopedias in topics such as accounting and finance, arts, biographies, business, economics, ethics and philosophy, history, literature, music, nursing, psychology, religion, science, and technology.
Global Issues in Context is a great database to research today's world issues. It integrates news, global viewpoints, reference materials, country information, primary source documents, videos, and statistics to give you a global perspective on your issue.
· Opposing Viewpoints in Context
Opposing Viewpoints in Context is one of our most popular databases and is great to use for your pro/con paper or to research diverse views on an issue. It covers current social issues and includes pro/con viewpoints, news, commentary, reference articles, interactive maps, and more.
· Research Starters - Business
Research Starters - Business is designed to help you grasp the broad outlines of various business topics, understand their real-world applications, and locate sources for advanced scholarly research.
· Research Starters - Education
Research Starters - Education is designed to help you grasp the broad outlines of various education topics, understand their real-world applications, and locate sources for advanced scholarly research.
Your Topic - Too Much? Not Enough?
Too Broad
If your topic is too broad, you will be overwhelmed with too much information and much if it will be irrelevant to your research. Examples of topics that are too broad include:
· Global warming
· Health care in the United States
· Terrorism
To narrow your topic and make your search results more manageable (and applicable!), try making your topic more specific:
· Global warming and carbon offsets
· Health care in rural communities in the United States
· The portrayal of terrorism by media outlets in the United States
You can also narrow a topic by:
· Place (obesity in the United States)
· Time (women’s liberation in the 1970s)
· Population (impact of technology on toddlers)
Too Narrow
If you are not finding many (or any) resources, it may be that your topic is too narrow.
Examples of topics that may be too narrow include:
· Revenue for the limousine service industry in Waco, Texas
· The health benefits of jazz
· The economic forces of soldiers during the battle at the Alamo
Alternately, it could be that there is no answer to your question – the research just hasn’t been conducted on that aspect of your topic. Congratulations! You may have identified a gap in the literature!
Just Right
With some work, you should be able to identify a topic that is neither too broad nor too narrow and that you find interesting. Keep in mind that you may have to come back to this step after doing some research on your topic in order to either narrow or broaden your topic.
Convert Question to Keywords
Unlike Google, most databases do not use a natural language search. Instead, you need to break your question down into keywords and terms to create a more optimized search. Follow the steps below to learn how:
Example Question: “What is the impact of having the media in the courtroom?”
1. Identify Keywords: Impact Media Courtroom (typical keywords will be nouns and verbs)
2. Identify alternative words for keywords: (synonyms and words that express similar concepts) Media: journalist, journalism, newspapers, news, cameras Courtroom : court, trial Impact : affect, effect, influence
A thesaurus can help you think of other search terms.
Now that you have identified some keywords, you will need to think about how to combine them for the most effective search.
Combine Keywords
Help! I entered all of the keywords and alternate keywords "impact affect effect influence media journalist journalism newspapers news cameras court trial" into the database, but I didn't find anything useful. What am I doing wrong?
Don't panic. You just need to use these terms along with Boolean search operators so the database knows how it should combine them.
Boolean Searching is a type of searching that allows you to combine keywords using operators, such as AND, OR, and NOT. For example:
· Boolean AND: media AND court: All results will include both words "media" and "court".
· Boolean OR: Media OR reporter OR news: Each result will have at least one of the words, but not necessarily all. This option returns more results than when using AND.
· Boolean NOT: media, NOT newspapers: The results will include the word "media," but will not include anything with the word "newspapers".
Additional Tools
Other ways to broaden or narrow your search:
Truncation:
· This style is used to find words with alternate endings or spellings.
· In most cases, an asterisk (*) is used as the truncation symbol.
· Examples:
· Court* will find court, courts courtroom, etc.
· Journal* will find journal, journals, journalists, journalism, etc.
· News* will find news, newspaper, newspapers, etc.
Phrase searching:
· Placing quotes " " around two or more words will tell the database to search for that phrase.
· Example: “mass media”
Complex searching:
· This is sometimes referred to as "nested searching".
· This can be a combination of your search terms with Boolean operators, plus truncation and phrase searching.
· Example: (impact OR influence) AND "mass media" AND courtroom
· This tells the database to do the following:
1. Search for the word impact or influence in the parenthesis ( ).
2. Search for the phrase within the quotation marks " ".
3. Search for the single term "courtroom".
4. Combine all three searches with the Boolean operator AND.
The University Library provides access to many different types of databases and resources. The requirements of your assignment, along with the topic, will help determine the type of database or databases you should use.
Choosing a Database
Use the University Library's subject pages to help you select the most appropriate databases for your topic.
Top of Form
Select a Subject Go
Bottom of Form
Library Search versus Individual Databases
The library search box will uncover results from a wide variety of resources and materials, including newspapers, books, multimedia, primary source documents, magazines, and journals. Basically, it allows you to locate content in almost all of our Library databases in one search. This a good place to get started with your research.
Enter your search terms and then review the results.
The search results can provide you with clues for your next steps that you can use in the Library search box or in individual databases.
Books or Journals?
Books
Books are a great place to start your research. They offer in-depth coverage on a topic, but may not be as current as other sources of information. The University Library has a collection of ebooks that you can search.
Ebook Central provides e-books covering a range of subjects including business, IT, education, humanities, nursing, and psychology from various scholarly sources such as University Presses and other top publishers.
Oxford Reference contains specialized dictionaries and encyclopedias covering subjects across the humanities, social sciences, sciences, medicine, and law. Many entries include illustrations to help demonstrate concepts and meanings.
Oxford Scholarship Online contains academic books that offer perspectives from historical to modern times, covering subjects across the humanities, social sciences, sciences, medicine, and law.
Journals
Articles in magazines and peer-reviewed scholarly journals are a good source of current information. This is where you'll find the latest research.
You can find thousands of articles in magazines and journals in the Library's databases. Two good places to start are EBSCOhost and ProQuest. These databases cover a wide range of topics and a comprehensive list of publications.
EBSCOhost is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary research database, covering a range of topics including business, current affairs, criminal justice, health, and multicultural issues. It provides full text access to current and authoritative journals, magazines, pamphlets, and news sources.
· ProQuest
ProQuest is a comprehensive and diverse multidisciplinary research databases, offering access to information across all major subject areas, including business, health and medical, social sciences, arts and humanities, education, science and technology, and religion. The collection includes full-text scholarly journals, newspapers, magazines, dissertations, working papers, and market reports.
Can't I Just Google It?
We love to search Google because it’s fast, free, and easy. But it can also be overwhelming in the number of hits it retrieves (not to mention that it’s hard to verify the veracity and reliability of the sources). The University Library provides access to Google Scholar, which searches for scholarly literature across multiple disciplines and sources and cross-searches within our resources to see if we have the article available in full-text in our collection.
On the Google Scholar results page, look for a link that says "Full Text @ My Library" next to an article. If you see that, chances are good that you will be able to follow that link to access the full text of the article through the University of Phoenix Library.
Google Scholar searches scholarly literature across multiple disciplines and sources. These materials include peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts, and articles from academic publishers, professional societies, pre-print repositories, universities, and other scholarly organizations. Please note Google Scholar is not a completely full-text database.
Too Many Results?
6,467 results?!
Don’t panic. This is salvageable. Below are a few tips to help you begin to revise your search in order to get more relevant information on your topic.
· Review the abstracts: Are they germane to your topic?
· Look for additional terms and keywords that are applicable to your search. In some cases, you will find that the industry uses different terminology. For example:
· alternative energy = “green energy,” “renewable energy,” and “clean energy”
· Use the Subject lines in records to locate other books or articles on the same subject. For example:
· “online networks” = subject terms “online social networks” and “social media.” (In some cases, the subject terms are links that you can follow to other articles on your topic.)
Pull off the Training Wheels - We're Advanced Searching Now!
Almost every database offers an ADVANCED search link. This will allow you to search for terms in a specific field. For example:
· Title
· Author
· Subject
· Publication title
Advanced Searching Tricks
Limiters
Limiters, sometimes referred to as filters or facets, are used to reduce the number of documents retrieved and make the ones you get more relevant. Limiters may include:
· Full-text materials
· Peer-reviewed or scholarly materials
· Particular author(s) or publications
· Specific subject terms
· A specific date or date range
Within most resources, these limiters can be found on the results page once you run a search or on the Advanced Search page.
Proximity Searching
The closer in proximity the terms are, the more likely they relate to one another. Example:
Question: “Is leadership learned, or is it an innate ability?”
Search: (innate w2 leader*) or (learn* w2 leader*).
This will find the terms within two words of each other. Some databases use the "n" rather than "w" for near. Each database handles searching differently so you will want to review their help section for search tips.
Advanced Search Video Tutorials
Watch the videos below to learn more about using advanced search features in Library databases.
