Finding information requires a lot of skills that you may not be aware that you have or that you are developing. Use this page to learn strategies for HOW to find the most relevant information to meet your needs.
Use the sub-pages to learn WHERE to search for research on your topic or question.
Check out information in Step 5 about Citation Trails to learn how to discover additional citations to relevant works to help you answer your research question.
Image by Kelly Blanchat, Yale University Library
" "
To search for specific phrases, enclose them in quotation marks. The database will search for those words together in that order.
Examples:
“Italian Renaissance”
"pictorial hangings"
"15th century"
"Mannerist period"
"Renaissance architecture"
"Battle of San Romano"
TRUNCATION
Truncate a word in order to search for different forms of the same word. Many database use the asterisk * as the truncation symbol.
Examples:
Truncate the word architect* and you will search for architect, architects, architecture, etc.
Add the truncation symbol to the word paint* to search for paint, painter, painters, painting etc.
religio* to search for religion, religious etc.
If you have a known item, especially a journal article, here are some places to search to locate the item.
3) Selected Database
Activity:
Can you find these articles? Use the methods above to see if you can find these articles.
Goyal, Manu S. et al. (2019). Persistent metabolic youth in the aging female brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
Boothy, E. J, Cooney, G, & Sandstrom, G.M. (2018). The liking gap in conversations: do people like us more than we think? Psychological Science. 29(3). 1742-1756.
Did you find the information you needed? Will it help you answer your research question? If not, it might be time to reach out to a Research Librarian for an appointment.
As researchers, we should approach the evidence we find with an open mind. Research should broaden or inform our perspectives, and not confirm our own biases. If your research is just a collection of cherry-picked quotes, you may need to go back to the library catalog, UC Library Search, or the article databases to gather more information and other perspectives to consider.
Copyright @ The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.