How To Do Research

From Library Reference

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Contents

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Introduction to Research

Doing research is like being a detective. You move from something known or easy-to-get-to-know to the more "hidden" materials that provide special pleasure in the discovery. Each little step will eventually lead to further possibilities.

Start your search as soon as possible so that you will not need to panic in the last moment. Remember that it takes an average of 2 weeks for materials to come from other libraries, if you cannot find them here.

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Start with an Overview

  • Start with a general overview to get an idea about the subject matter, the time period, historical context, names of persons associated with the topic, names of experts in the field, etc.
  • Take special note of the bibliography (in the online Britannica, there are links to relevant articles and websites under the "Expand your Research" link) in any reputable work (such as the [Encyclopedia Britannica or a subject encyclopedia) to get a basic idea of experts in the field. You can then search for works done by these experts by going to the Library Catalog (for books).
  • Remember--you can always ask a librarian for help, even if you're not in the Library. See the Reference & Information Services page for more information on ways to contact a librarian in person, online, by phone, or by e-mail.
  • You will need to accumulate a body of materials before you can decide on your final topic for your research project. Sometimes there is very little to be found; then you need to expand your topic to allow you to work with a larger amount of material. Sometimes there is so much material, that to produce a meaningful paper, you need to limit your topic. In any case, you need to discover what is available as soon as possible.
  • Whenever you find anything that may prove to be useful, be sure to make a note of the source for the information, so that weeks down the road you don’t have to scramble to find that source for your bibliography.
  • It can be very useful to keep a list of terms in your research notebook as you work through your research project. As you find different ways that sources refer to your subject, you can add the terms to your list, so that you have alternative words to try as you're researching.
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Next Steps

  • Now you need to decide where to go for the most likely materials. If your topic is something very current, you will need to search an index for articles, since articles in journals tend to be the most up-to-date. If your topic is historical or analytical, your search may include journal articles but not be limited to them. In that case, you will want to search the Library Catalog as well. For instance, if your topic has to do with a literary or art work of the past, you will need to search for new sources as well as the older ones. (After all, you have no way of knowing ahead of time when someone may have written something really important on that subject.)
  • You need to know that most indexes don't include online coverage pror to the 1980’s. Be sure to check the years of coverage of any index to consult. If you need to find material that was published before the dates covered in the index, consult printed indexes and/or books OR look for your topic on one of the online indexes/databases that includes historical or archival coverage. See Journal, Magazine, & Newspaper Indexes with Historical and/or Archival Coverage
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Searching the Library Catalog.

  • Do an "any word anywhere" search for the most basic attempt at locating material, trying more than a single term, if possible.
  • Discover whether any of the items listed in the bibliographies (lists or resources)that you found in "encyclopedias" or "subject encyclopedias" are held by the Library. If so, locate them on the shelf and again look for a bibliography in each of these sources.

In the search of the Library Catalog, if you locate anything that appears useful, make a special note of the subject headings that were used to describe the material. You can use these subject headings to expand your search beyond your starting point.

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INTERNET Searching

  • Searching the Internet can be very useful. It can help you discover very current material, alternate spellings of names, and hard-to-find tidbits of information not readily available elsewhere.

NOTE: You must remember that that ANYONE can put up a Web site. There is no guarantee that what you find is complete, up-to-date, unbiased, or in many cases even moderately accurate. For many web sites, there is no editor or committee to check on the accuracy of the information, as there would be for a printed source. Therefore, you must learn to be critical and evaluate your sources.

  • How can you know that your source is trustworthy? Ask the following questions:
  • Is there an author? Is the page signed? Can the author be contacted?
  • Is the author an expert? How do you know?
  • Who sponsored the page?
  • Is there any information about the author or the sponsor?
  • Is the information dated? Regularly updated?
  • Is there any bias in the information presented?
  • How in-depth does the information appear to be?

Judging from domain names/URLs, these free Internet pages are more reliable:

  • Official US government sites, with .gov as domain name;
  • Official education sites for research and learning, with .edu as domain name;
  • Reputable information-based companies' sites, such as Time.com, NYTimes.com;
  • Professional organizations' sites; with .org as domain name (But be very cautious if it is an organization you do not know.)

And these Web sites need to be critically evaluated:

  • Personal sites, which can have .edu or anything as domain name, but typically have a tilde ~ plus personal name in the URL;
  • Companies' sites for promoting business;
  • Organizations (with org as domain name) that may have political, ideological, cultural, religious or institutional bias;
  • Web sites with no indication of authorship.

For some topics, of course, the Internet is essential. Certain kinds of statistics, tables, and government information, for instance, can be found only this way.

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How to make sure an information source is trustworthy:

For Internet sources, see the section above. You can probably trust a URL of a Web page recommended in a "Subject Research Guide" on the library home page.

For printed sources:

  • Consider how you came upon the information. You can trust it if the source is something listed in a bibliography of an encyclopedia or it came from a scholarly index or database (such as those listed on the library home page under "Journal Indexes/Databases"). Also an expert you have identified in your original search will usually refer to other experts in the field.
  • You can trust certain publishers to do a pretty decent job of printing material that’s been researched and verified: Yale, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Norton, etc.
  • You can go to a reviewing service to find what people knowledgeable in the field have thought about a particular book. If you are looking for information on a reference book, you might try looking for reviews in American Reference Books Annual REF. Z1035.1 .A55 1995-2005 or the ARBA in Depth series, which you can find by searching the Library Catalog for the keyword "ARBA".
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Don't See What You're Looking For?

If you didn't find the help you were looking for on this page, please call, e-mail, or append a comment to let us know what kind of research assistance you were seeking. We are here to help, and we want to know if our services could be made more useful. Thank you for helping us build a better Reference Service. For a list of who to contact, go to: http://library.bradley.edu/staff/liaison.shtml


You can access many of the Library's research resources from the Library's home page, at: http://library.bradley.edu/

--updated by Bryan Clark, baclark@bradley.edu, 3:44, 19 August 2009 (CDT)

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