FYSP 069: Astrobiology

This guide is designed to kickstart student research in FYSP 069 Astrobiology by highlighting key resources, databases, and strategies that will be useful for your work in this class.

Here is a good, basic formula for getting started with your research:

• Begin by narrowing down your topic and developing an initial research question.
• Use the keyword brainstorming worksheet to help you tweak your research question, identify keywords and related terms, and keep track of what you find.  
• Use Search.Libraries on the OC Libraries web page to find books and reference sources.  These sources will:
  • provide BACKGROUND and CONTEXT
  • REVIEW and SUMMARIZE earlier work
  • help you FOCUS your topic and
  • provide CITATIONS to important books, journal articles, conference papers, interviews, etc.
• Next, search research databases to find articles. The library has hundreds of databases; those listed on this guide are good places to begin.
• You may also wish to use Google Scholar to search the Internet.  This is a great tool for doing cited reference searches.

The following are some best bets for starting Astrobiology research. For a full list of databases at Oberlin, check out our Databases A-Z.