College research ain’t easy. It’s nothing like the papers from high school, because the training wheels are off. You are part of the academic conversation. New vocabulary, technical writing, and using citations to talk with scholars/professors about proof you have done your homework behind the thoughts.

Luckily, while not a short-cut, there is a wise tool to add to your skillset. In the library’s databases, you can search
“Literature review” AND “your topic”

Remember to use the double quote mark to help the computer ignore:

1. literature without the reviews, 
2. reviews that aren’t about your topic, and
3. Articles that mention your topic but are not “literature reviews.”  (the image below is of a Venn diagram of literature AND review– with a subcircle inside the overlap for  “literature review” )

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Librarians and professors suggest you start your research process from the library’s website because of filtering (described in our previous post). The librarians collect scholarly (peer-reviewed) material. That doesn’t mean every book on the shelf is perfect. Some may have been retracted or disproven yet remain part of a historical record. Recent examples are Frey’s A Million Little Pieces or when Krakauer disproved Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea. 

                                             Information surrounding us (~6 min)As a scholar yourself, in order to build your own ideas, part of your work is to double-check, verify, or cross-reference what others have said or written about the documents you are reading and citing . Who knows? You may find the first voice announcing major errors identified through new techniques or new information.

I–perhaps oddly–prefer the deliberate search bars of ProQuest and BobCat. Filters (usually on the left of the screen in a results page) are explicit and focus a broadsearch into something more specific to your needs. Unlike Google, typing more words into BobCat’s or ProQuest’s search bars will not help you. Start with two words then use the filters.Check in with a librarian. We can share screens with you in chat at Ask a Librarian{point out the contact us feature at the bottom of wechat? Or add a screen clip of the “Chat with us” from the library homepage}. If you have time, ask for instructions on how to run the search or select the filters yourself.

Part of a librarian’s job is exploring databases (collections of articles or books). These are described in the Articles & Databases tab as an annotated bibliography. 

To find the relevant databases across all collections use the search bar on the right, under Databases A-Z; type in a discipline or format. 

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When you’ve searched Google for a book, has Google ever suggested, “Go to your local library”?

No.

Imagining this is the book you are looking for. You typed the name in and the result is like this:

But none of these results will tell you that your Library already has it! 

Part of that is on us, librarians: we haven’t opened our data and we are working on that. But it’s also because we (libraries) don’t pay Google to promote us. No one really knows Google’s algorithm, so it is hard to guess what sources it isn’t showing you 

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