44d Search efficiently; master a few shortcuts to finding good sources.

You can save yourself time by becoming an efficient searcher of library databases and the web.

Using the library

The website hosted by your college library links to databases and other references containing articles, studies, and reports written by key researchers. Use your library’s resources, designed for academic researchers, to find the most authoritative sources for your project.

Using bibliographies and citations as shortcuts

Scholarly books and articles list the works the author has cited, usually at the end. These lists are useful shortcuts to additional reliable sources on your topic. Following the trail of citations may lead you to helpful sources by those experts or the organizations they represent.

Using the web

When conducting searches, use terms that are as specific as possible. The keywords you use will determine the quality of the results you see. You can refine your search by date or domain. Use clues in what you find (such as websites of organizations or government agencies that seem informative) to refine your search.

How to

Go beyond a Google search

You might start with Google to gain an overview of your topic, but relying on the popular search engine to choose your sources isn’t a research strategy. Good research involves going beyond the information available from a quick Google search. To locate reliable, authoritative sources, be strategic about how and where to search.

1. Familiarize yourself with the research conversation. Identify the current debate about the topic you have chosen and the most influential writers and experts in the debate. Where is the research conversation happening? In scholarly sources? Government agencies? The popular media?

2. Generate keywords to focus your search. Use specific words and combinations to search. Add words such as debate, disagreements, proponents, or opponents to track down the various positions in the research conversation. Use a journalist’s questions—Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?—to refine a search.

3. Search discipline-specific databases available through your school library to locate carefully chosen scholarly (peer-reviewed) content that doesn’t appear in search results on the open web. Use databases such as JSTOR and Academic Search Premier, designed for academic researchers, to locate sources in the most influential publications.

4. If your topic has been in the news, try CQ Researcher, available through most college libraries. Its brief articles provide pro/con arguments on current controversies in criminal justice, law, environment, technology, health, and education.

5. Explore the Pew Research Center (pewresearch.org), which sponsors original research and nonpartisan discussions of findings and trends in a wide range of academic fields.