You know how to broadly search on the open web, so next we will cover research. In this step you develop search strategies, look for scholarly sources through the library databases, and incorporate critical thinking skills to form opinions on your findings. Watch the video below and read to learn how to collect scholarly, academic literature from the library catalog, DragonSearch, and subject specific databases. You will also familiarize yourself with interlibrary loan, or how to request a full-text PDF of an article when it is not immediately available through our library.
Scholarly sources can sometimes be referred to as academic, peer-reviewed, or refereed sources. Generally, these types of resources are written by subject experts and will often go through a peer-review process to ensure the quality and accuracy of information. Scholarly sources include books from academic publishers and peer-reviewed journal articles. We will talk more about evaluating these sources in the next section, Step 6 Evaluate.
For right now, you likely want to determine whether an article qualifies as scholarly. The easiest way to do this when starting your research is make sure you are using a limiter in the databases that will provide you with scholarly or peer reviewed results. Most databases will have this as a limiter, but not all.
Using your Concept Map from the Discover section, look back at some of the keywords and phrases you used to brainstorm ideas for your research topic. Now apply those keywords into a database search but with a few tips and tricks mentioned below.
Remember, a database is different from using a web search engine. You need to be very intentional with the words you type into search boxes to get good results.
Keywords
It is considered a good practice to think of a few synonyms for each search concept to make sure you are locating all available information on a topic.
For example, if you are looking up information on "vaccine hesitancy", you may want to also search for "vaccination hesitancy". If you were looking up information about wearable fitness tracking technology, you would also want to use terms like activity tracker, pedometer, etc.
Boolean Operators
Once you have your concepts and keywords ready to search, you need to conncect them together with Boolean Operators - AND, OR, NOT.
Use OR to connect similar concepts. So when you type, "vaccine hesitancy" OR "vaccination hesitancy", you are telling the database that you want results with either concept. OR = MORE
Use AND to connect your concepts for narrower results. So ("vaccine hesitancy" OR "vaccination hesitancy") AND "United States" would limit results down. See what a DragonSearch would look like below:
Occasionally you may come across an article or book in a database that the library does not have in immediate full-text. Just because we don't have it right away doesn't mean you can't gain access. You can place an Interlibrary Loan (ILL) request on articles, books, book chapters and more.
From Dragon Search, in the catalog record, click the How to Get It button and log in with your Drexel credentials. You should see an option to place an ILL for books, book chapters and articles.
For the activity, you will conduct research by composing a search strategy and then go into library databases and look for scholarly/peer reviewed journal articles on your topic. Depending on your research topic, you may use a broad, general database (like using DragonSearch or Academic OneFile). But you will also need to consult a second database that is subject specific to your topic. For example, if your topic is about mental health, you would want to search in a database like PsycInfo. More information about subject specific databases is listed below.
Steps
DragonSearch is a broad, interdisciplinary library platform for finding books, articles and other material, held in the DU Libraries. The search box on the library homepage defaults to searching everything (books, articles, and more) in one convenient page of results. DragonSearch automatically searches for all the words that you enter across the most common fields, including author, title, and subject.
However, it is likely in your best interest for this assignment to run an Advanced search. Watch the video below to see suggested search techniques when using DragonSearch.
While DragonSearch is an excellent resource for getting started on your research, you may find that you are provided with broad results. Depending on your research topic, you may want to search within a subject specific database. DU Libraries has a comprehensive listing of subject specific databases on our Databases A to Z page. From the drop down menu at the top left, select the subject area that best fits your research topic.
Another way to locate the best databases for your subject area is by looking at library Subject Guides by discipline. In the guides, you will see lists of subject specific databases that were curated by DU librarians. One of the benefits of using subject specific databases is that they often contain controlled vocabulary unique to the database that helps make it easy to find relevant articles on a subject. You can think of this controlled vocabulary as the "hashtags" for the database.
For example, in a health science related database, PubMed, we can see that they call their controlled vocabulary, Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). Here is a search using a combination of both keywords and controlled vocabulary.
Using controlled vocabulary can be a little tricky if you are new to database searching, so please consult with a Drexel librarian or contact the appropriate Disciplinary Support Team (Health Sciences, STEAM or Humanities and Social Sciences) for assistance.