This guide is designed to support students conducting research for the Nonfiction Workshop, introducing key library resources, and tips and strategies for searching.
Search Strategy
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 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.