Write a sentence or two to summarize your research topic. Use this to determine your keywords. Picking out the nouns and noun phrases from your summary is a good place to start. To expand your list of keywords, think about synonyms, language used in academic discourse vs. popular discourse, historically relevant language, etc.
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?
Some questions you may consider as you search:
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?
What are primary sources? They are often referred to as "first hand" accounts or "original" records. Primary sources are the evidence historians use to build interpretations of the past. Primary sources also refer to original works of art, including plays and fiction. Most primary sources are created at the time an historical event occurred, while others, such as autobiographies, are produced long after the events they describe. Among the many types of materials that may be primary sources are: letters, diaries, speeches, newspaper articles, autobiographies, oral histories, government and organizational records, statistical data, maps, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings, advertisements, and artifacts.
A secondary source (or secondary analysis) gives information about or analysis of a primary source. In academia, these secondary sources are usually published in books, edited volumes, or scholarly journals. One of the main characteristics of scholarly journals is the process of peer review. Research articles under consideration for publication in a scholarly journal are sent to experts in the subject field (peers) for evaluation and comment (review).
This Peer Review in 3 Minutes video tutorial created by North Carolina State University covers: how peer-reviewed articles are different from other types of publications; how peer-reviewed articles are tied to teaching and learning activities on college campuses; and where to go for help in finding peer-reviewed articles. See also their helpful resource Anatomy of a Scholarly Article.
Open Access publishing is a movement that makes scholarly content available free of charge. The UNC Libraries support open access, open archives, and open repositories as methods to encourage the widest possible access to scholarly content.
Unpaywall or Open Access Button
Browser extensions that search for open access versions of articles you may find behind pay walls.
There are a lot of resources listed here and even more within the library's webpages. Don't get overwhelmed! You do not need to search them all. The resources in this guide are here to help you find material that is more tailored to the topics of this course. They may or may not be a perfect fit for your unique research needs. Try searching in a few new spots for each research project you do, stretch out of your comfort zone a little at a time, and always ask for help from a librarian if you have questions.