I hope this guide will provide some useful starting places for your research, as you work on your sourced papers. I'm available and happy to consult with you about any part of the research process, from finding and evaluating sources to understanding how to cite them. —Karen​ Storz, Research & Instruction Librarian
SuperSearch can be a great place to get a panoramic view of a topic from a wide variety of sources. Some tips:
Databases can contain a combination of full-text (ready to read online) and citation information that can lead you to articles, book chapters, or books. Some databases, like Academic Search Complete, are multidisciplinary. Others, like PsycINFO or GenderWatch, focus on specific subjects such as psychology or women's and gender studies.
The databases here are just a few that could be useful for the kinds of research topics you might be pursuing in this course. Check out our Databases list and sort by Subject and/or Content type to see other relevant databases. It's always a good idea to try in more than one database.
Full-text scholarly articles in all disciplines.
Scholarly journal articles and magazine articles in the fields of communications, mass media, journalism, television, film, radio, newspaper publishing, speech, broadcasting, and advertising.
Full-text peer-reviewed articles on gender, sex, and sexuality in history, sociology, psychology, education, art, and more.
Scholarly journal articles and books in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Does not include the most recent 3-5 years of many journals.
Political science resources, including scholarly and peer reviewed journal articles and think tank reports. Covers international as well as U.S. topics and sources.
Citations to journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations from the international scholarly literature of psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines. Access to a thesaurus of psychological terms.
Scholarly and peer reviewed articles in sociology.
Unsure about what database to use? Ask me!
These search tips work in SuperSearch and most library databases.
Use quotation marks " " to search words as a phrase. This will narrow your results.
"self esteem"
Use AND to combine multiple concepts in your search. This will narrow your results.
selfie AND "self esteem"
Use OR to find different ways your topic could be expressed. This will expand your results. Group these related terms in parentheses, so the database interprets them first. The following search will find results that have either one of the phrases in parentheses along with selfie.
selfie AND ("self esteem" OR "body image")
Use an asterisk * to find variant endings (e.g., gender, gendered, feminine, femininity, etc.). This will expand your results, because again, you're providing more options.
selfie AND (gender* OR "sex role" OR feminin* OR ​masculin*)
This guide from Ryerson University provides a great example of some ways you might use sources when writing about a very recent topic, especially if there isn't much scholarly work on the topic yet.
