The types of resources you plan to research and include as part of your thesis can influence your search strategies.
Think about the type of material that you need -- do you need to find a letter? A scholarly article? A book?
Scenario 1: You found a letter written by James Baldwin and would like to find information that situates the content of the letter in the context of his life and work. What type of resource might you look for?
Scenario 2: You are interested in how movie adaptations of Toni Morrison's work reflect and comment on her themes. Where might you find information?
Scenario 3: You want to find an analysis of biblical influences in Baldwin's or Morrison's work. What might you search for?
Note: knowing what you need to find will help you find it. Some databases have scholarly articles, while others include popular sources. Many have both. In addition, there are databases that include illustrations, musical recordings, and more.
Often you will be asked to include peer-reviewed literature in your writing. Fortunately, many databases include a Scholarly/Peer-Reviewed/Academic Journal limiter to help you determine is an article is indeed peer reviewed.
Profiles nearly a quarter of a million consumer and trade magazines, academic and scholarly publications, monographic series, newsletters, newspapers, electronic publications, 'zines, and many other types of serial publications on all subjects.
This video explains the peer review process of scholarly articles.
University of West Florida, John C. Pace Library, 4:53
The video begins by describing three categories of articles—scholarly, trade, and popular—and lists their respective audiences, authors, purposes, writing styles, inclusion or lack of references, and other notable features. It also goes over a little of the publication cycle. Start the video at 0:03, and end it at 4:24 to skip over the library specific branding and contact information. It might not be best in a guide because of the branding, but there could always be a note about ending the video early or noting how our information is different, etc. This might be good to watch in a class session.
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