With your partner or partners, do a quick elevator pitch of your research topic and brainstorm keywords for your search. Think about synonyms, language used in academic discourse vs. popular discourse, historically relevant language, etc. Then list the name of the source (library database, website, or otherwise) you intend to use to start your research.
Start with a search in the library's catalog. Find a relevant title. How would you access this item? What are the Subject headings listed for this title?
Try a search in Artilces+.
On the left side of the page, you will find the option to narrow your results to scholarly and peer-reviewed material. Skim through the results and list the title of an article that looks particularly interesting or relevant.
Reset this choice. Now limit your results by Content Type. Choose newspaper articles. (Note that you could also limit by Publication Date). Skim through the results and list the title of an article that looks particularly interesting or relevant.
Compare the results from the two searches. How might both types of material be important to your research?
Browse the other resources suggested in this guide. Choose one that seems interesting or relevant to your topic.
What is the name of the database you are searching? What kind of material does it contain? Do you have a sense of what time period or location these materials cover? ("No" is an okay answer here, sometimes it is hard to nail down.)
How might the types of materials included in this database be used to support your research work in this class? How is it relevant to your research topic or to a class discussion?
Share any other points your group noted during today's work. Some questions you may consider:
Did you need to refine your keywords? Did you adjust any facets/toggles to refine your search results? Did you need to narrow or expand your search?
Did you note any methods for searching within an item? Did anything you found lead to other items you may find useful?
What makes a particular item worth paying attention to?
Can you provide some context for an item you found? (Can you tell who the author is? Where was this published or found? Whose story is being told and in what way? What voices are present or absent in this material?)
What criteria do you use to evaluate a source (credibility, relevance, etc)?
Is there any material that you found today that you feel strongly about? That you would, or wouldn’t, use? Why? How might the search strategies you learned today be applied to your future research?