Instruction Commons Guides
How to do Basic Library Research:
A Five Step Guide

Doing Library Research

A lot of students are uneasy about the library research process, not knowing how or where to start. This guide breaks the process into five easy steps: defining your topic, identifying resources on your topic, obtaining them, and most importantly, evaluating the resources you've found, and documenting your research.

1: Define your Topic   2: Identify Where & How  to Search   3. Obtain Identified Items  
4. Evaluate Items   5. Document your Research

1.  Define your topic

Maybe you have been assigned a topic by your professor, or you are hunting for a subject on your own. Once you have decided what you want to research, consider the following questions:

What do you already know about your topic?  What don't you know?  What do you want / need to find out?

What level of research does your assignment require?  For example, are you preparing to write a ten page research paper with a bibliography and footnotes, or delivering a brief class presentation?  How much information will be enough for your project?

Are you looking for quick facts, statistics, or a broad overview of your topic, or do you need to analyze the topic in depth?

Has your professor required that you consult certain types of materials such as books, or articles in popular or scholarly periodicals, or a particular database?

Does your assignment require that you consult a specific number of resources?

Does your topic deal with events in history, or with current events?  If current, how current?

Do you have a broad topic or is it very specific?  For example, do you want to research  health issues in general, or the health concerns of early 20th century working class immigrant women in New York City?

If you are unsure of your assignment, be sure to talk with your professor.
If you are unsure of how to start, it's a good idea to talk with a reference librarian.
See also the Commons guide:  Choosing and Narrowing a Topic

2.  Identifying where & how to search

After you have defined your topic and considered the questions above, it's time to start looking for information and resources. Answers to the questions above will also help you choose appropriate research tools. For example:

Almanacs, dictionaries, handbooks, and encyclopedias are useful tools for finding quick facts, statistics, or a broad overview of your topic.  If you don't know much about your topic already, these tools can be a good place to start.

Use library catalogs when you need to know what a particular library owns and where to find it.  The ISU Library Catalog includes books, journals, magazines, newspapers, electronic databases, microfilm, videos, software, and other formats. Increasingly, the Library Catalog also provides access to Web resources.

Bibliographies, periodical and newspaper indexes, and abstract services are useful tools for finding articles in journals, magazines, newspapers, finding chapters or essays within books, and other publications on your topic.  You can often locate bibliographies and indexes by searching library catalogs, using a keyword search strategy that includes a few basic words that describe your broad topic, and the words <bibliography> or <indexes>.  For example:

women and indexes

When using bibliographies, periodical and newspaper indexes, and abstract services, bear in mind that this is often a two-step process: (a) first, use the bibliography or index to identify an item, and (b) then use the Library Catalog to find out if that item is owned by the Library.

Be aware that bibliographies and indexes may come in electronic or book format, and that these finding tools may focus on many different topics from general information to subject-specific research information. You will want to identify and use the finding tool(s) that best meet your information needs.

Search the Web if you need supplemental information or unique resources for your topic, or if your topic is designed for Web research. In general, the Web is usually not the first place you should go to look for most research materials, but there are exceptions. If you do want to use Web resources for your research, be sure to evaluate every piece of information you find on the Web.

A note on search strategy:  If you don't find anything on your topic, try using alternate words to describe the subject.  For example, a library catalog might use the subject term "hispanic americans" or "mexican americans" while another tool, such as a periodical index or a specialized encyclopedia, might use the term "latinos" or "chicanos". Think creatively, and ask a reference librarian for help.

If you need help identifying or using appropriate resources, please talk with a reference librarian.

If you have questions or just don't know how to get started, don't hesitate to ask a reference librarian -- it's our job to help you!

3.  Obtaining resources you've identified

For this step, you need to find out whether your library owns a copy of the item you need, or can help you get access to it. At ISU, the process here is simple:

Enter the ISU Library Catalog, and do a title, subject, keyword, or author search based on the information you have.  For example, you may know that Nicolás Kanellos has written extensively on Latinos, but you don't have the specific titles. In this case, do an author search. In the catalog, click on author, and type:

kanellos nicolas

If you have a citation to a journal article, you need to find out whether the ISU Library owns that particular journal. Again, enter the Library Catalog and do a title search on the name of that journal -- not the title of the individual article itself. For example, say you've found the following citation in an index:

"Exaggeration of despair in Sherman Alexie's 'Reservation Blues'." Gloria Bird.
Wicazo Sa Review, Fall 1995, v11 n2 p47(6).

In this example, the title of the article is "Exaggeration of despair... ," but the name of the journal that published this article is in bold. By using an index and finding this citation, you already know that the article exists. Your question now becomes: Does the library own this journal?  You will want to get into the Library Catalog, click on title or serial title, and type:

wicazo sa review

The same process applies when you have a citation to an essay or chapter within a book. Do a title search in the Library Catalog on the name of the book itself, not the chapter name or essay title.

Note that you do not type in accent marks, use capitalization, or punctuation when searching the Library Catalog. Also, if a title begins with the word the, a or an, omit that first word in your search. For example:

 

type:	garcia marquez gabriel	and not:	garcía márquez gabriel
type:	gunga din highway a novel	and not:	Gunga Din Highway:  A Novel
type:	african american review	and not:	the african american review

Once you locate your item in the Library Catalog, write down or print out the item's location and call number. For journal, magazine, and newspaper articles, also check the holdings to make sure the library owns the specific issue you need.

If you cannot locate your item in the Library Catalog this may mean that the ISU Library does not own that particular item.  In this case, you may want to verify this by consulting with a reference librarian.  If the item is not held, you can use Interlibrary Loan, a service that borrows items from other libraries for you.  Typically this process does take time, so you will want to plan ahead should you anticipate needing resources not locally held.

If you have difficulties searching or finding your items in the Library Catalog, please consult with a reference librarian.
If your topic is very specific or your assignment detailed, it's a good idea to start your research as soon as possible. You will want to allow yourself more time, just in case.

4.  Evaluating your sources

 

Now that you've found your materials and information, how do you know or how can you tell whether it's really relevant or suitable for your research project?  Sometimes, we have the tendency to want to use the first thing we find simply because it's the easiest and quickest thing to do. Sometimes we also have the tendency to believe anything we see in print.  If you want to become a good researcher, or write successful papers, or simply get good (or better) grades, you need to resist these tendencies!  Give yourself ample time for your research project, including not only time to find the information and write your paper, but also (and most importantly) the time to read through it and think.

 

Critical thinking is a necessary skill to develop as you read through all the information you've found on your topic.  At its most basic level, "critical thinking" means that as you read, you review your materials by asking yourself questions such as where the information came from, who is the author or publisher, how recent is the material, is it authoritative or valid, and so on.  Most research publications go through an external editing or peer review process that helps verify the authority and accuracy of the information presented.  Reputable newspapers and magazines also check their facts, but you will also want to consider such issues as objectivity, currency of your information, and how thoroughly your topic is covered.  The majority of web resources lack this kind of peer review or even simple fact checking, which means that you, the user, must thoroughly evaluate anything you encounter on the Web before deciding whether you should use it in your research.

 

To learn the steps of evaluation, consult the Commons guides on How to Evaluate Books and Journal Articles, and Evaluating websites. (And just fyi, at a more advanced level, critical thinking involves the intellectual evaluation of such things as how and why you have arrived at a certain opinion or conclusion, which is certainly useful during the thinking and writing stage of your research process, and during class discussions. Take a look at Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts, written by Peter A. Facione, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Santa Clara University, for an understandable and even fun introduction to the topic.) 

The following links can help you evaluate not only web resources but, in many cases, more traditional publications as well.  

Evaluating Internet Resources, long annotated list of evaluation pages, compiled by Webster University library.

Evaluate Web Pages, online teaching materials present major evaluation criteria, from Wolfgram Memorial Library at Widener University.

Critically Analyzing Information Sources, written by several reference librarians from Cornell University.

Thinking Critically about WWW Resources, listing of questions to consider, developed by librarian Esther Grassian at UCLA.

5.  Documenting your research

You want to be careful to fully document or cite all the resources you use in your research, especially if you are quoting or otherwise using other people's work, ideas, or phrasing. Despite popular belief, this includes anything and everything you find on the web. (Not citing the sources of your research, even materials from the Web, is plagiarism, a serious form of academic dishonesty that could cause you to be put on probation or be suspended from the university.)  Depending on the format of your assignment, you will probably compile a reference list, footnotes, a bibliography, or a combination of these. (This is another reason you will want to carefully document your research in progress -- if you forget to write down or print out the full citation for your source, you will need to retrace your steps in order to complete your bibliography, and this may not always be easy to do!)  Style manuals available on the Web and accessible through the Library Catalog can help you develop a consistent format for your citations. Increasingly, style manuals include instructions on how to cite electronic and WWW resources.

If you have questions about finding or using appropriate style manuals, please talk with a reference librarian.
If you are unfamiliar with the definition of academic dishonesty and plagiarism at ISU, see the Student Information Handbook and the Judicial Affairs Administration All-University Judiciary pages from the ISU Dean of Students Office. 

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Last updated: Monday, August 08, 2005 10:43 AM