Hand searching in bag
Photo source: Julie Jordan Scott.
Gratefully adapted with a CC license from Flickr.
A database, when you get right down to it, is a bag full of stuff. Crammed with details of authors, titles, and publishers, and categorized with identifying codes such as ISBN and DOI numbers, this stuff is selected on purpose to help you with your research. At the same time, a bag of stuff is only half the story. A database comes ready-made with a built-in hand to find that stuff. It has things you want, and a search tool to help you find them.
Databases contain records. A record--in research--is a snippet of information about a book, an article, a DVD, or any other item found in a library. It includes details such as title, author, subject, journal title, and publisher. Sometimes, it also has links to material available online.
An article database is a specific kind of database. It has records on many types of item but the most common is scholarly journal article. UofT Libraries subscribe to hundreds of article databases.
Databases: The MLA International Bibliography and the UofT Libraries' Catalogue
To create these records--and fill the database with stuff--experts comb scholarly journals in a particular subject area (e.g. History) and jot down all the citations for all the articles in them; this process is called indexing. Then they drop these citations into a virtual bucket: that's the database you search.
Catalogues are databases and they also contain records. What makes them different from article databases is scope. An article database tells you what exists in the world on a subject area, based on the journals it indexes. A catalogue tells you what a library actually has in its collection, both print and online, and its records come, not from indexing journals, but from new books and other materials being added to the collection over many years.
Search engines--like Google and Yahoo--are a lot like databases, but what makes them distinctive is not so much the stuff they search as the search functions themselves. Databases may have good search tools; but their bags of stuff are what matter: each database has different records worth looking at. Search engines, unlike databases, all crawl the free Web. That means their claim to fame is less the results they scoop and more the tools they find them with.
Hiking Trail Signs for Mt. Hamilton, Oregon
Photo source: Major Clanger.
Gratefully adapted with a CC license from Flickr.
Choosing sources is--in theory--straightforward: you seek out people who know. Whether you need a bike fixed, a faucet tightened, an assignment graded, a product sold, a meal cooked, an investment managed, or a cough cured, you visit a expert.
Research is like that too. Different research questions call for different knowledge and expertise from different people. It makes sense then to seek out different source types, depending on the expertise you need:
Encyclopedia articles (for broad overviews)
Newspaper articles (for reportage and current opinion)
Canadian Tire website (for current Canadian Tire product information)
Books (for in-depth study and analysis)
Primary texts (for engaging directly with a text)
Book reviews (for a synopsis and evaluation of a book)
Primary study articles (for science and social science original studies)
Scholarly journal articles (for highly-focused in-depth analysis)
Blog (for someone's personal opinion)
UN website (for international statistics).
There are 2 key ways to gauge a source's value for your paper:
Early in your research, when you're rummaging through databases and catalogues and flipping through books on the shelf, you need to quickly decide whether a source is likely to be useful. At this stage, you don't have time to read it closely. So instead, look for several superficial--but no less important--clues:
PURPOSE: What, in short, is the source's aim?
CREDENTIALS: Who created the source? Is she or he an established expert?
SOURCE TYPE: If you need a scholarly article, is it from a peer-reviewed journal? If you need a scholarly book, is it published by a reputable press and/or written by an established scholar?
CITATIONS: Checking for these is a very simple way of gauging whether a scholar has really researched a topic.
Later in your research, when you're sitting down to read what you've found at the library, ask yourself these questions:
CLARITY: Is it clear what the author is saying? Does he or she make regular typos or grammar errors?
TONE: Is the writing informal (e.g. full of slang and/or contractions like don't and I'm) or overly personal? Scholarly writing is generally formal and impersonal.
DEPTH: Does the argument make sense? Is the method sound and the evidence convincing? Are the arguments and conclusions of any significance or do they skim the topic?
A scholar examining a primary source . . .
Photo source: Michael.
Gratefully adapted with a CC license from Flickr.
Primary and secondary sources refer to two key types of information used in scholarship.
is studied, either for its own sake, or for what it reveals about the time and place in which it was produced. Scholars, like bees among flowers, are drawn to primary sources because by examining these original documents they can create substantial contributions to research.
Examples: poems, archival letters, the Magna Carta, an email, historical newspaper articles, Ontario government internal documents, Second World War broadcasts, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, scholarly journal articles presenting original studies, Shakespeare's plays, leases, census schedules, etc.
is studied chiefly because it comments upon or analyzes a primary source or another secondary source.
Examples: monographs (book-length studies written by one author), essay collections, encyclopedia articles, many scholarly journal articles, most literary criticism, Biblical commentaries, etc.
Begin with secondary sources. Authors of these have already done a lot of work for you. They can tell you what has been written on a topic: which theories underlie it, which scholars have most advanced it, which controversies animate it, which arguments knot and unravel it, and which sources underpin it. For some courses, this second-hand scholarship is often all you need. All the same, a committed researcher rightly wonders how scholars come to their conclusions. Ask yourself Why as you read, and follow-up footnotes and bibliographies. Dig deep enough into secondary sources and you will usually find one or more primary sources beneath.
The University of Toronto has more than 40 libraries and the key to using them all is the UofT Libraries' homepage. Click anywhere on the homepage below to explore. Click the background to look at a different link or tool on the page.
Foraging . . .
Photo source: Pete Favelle.
Gratefully adapted with a CC license from Flickr.
The UofT Libraries have more than 7-million books. Getting your hands on a particular title--or raking in a supportive list on your topic--means using a database called a catalogue. Catalogues are best known for their books; but they have others materials too. Ours lists almost everything we have, online and in print, including books, DVDs, scholarly journals, newspapers, maps, some archival materials, microfilm reels, theses, and magazines.
Type the title into the searchbox. In the drop-down menu, select title. If your title is fairly common, leave the drop-down menu at anywhere and add the author's last name. To get an exact phrase, put the words in quotation marks.
Looking for a specific book? This video shows you how to find one using the UofT Libraries' catalogue. "I Want You", written and performed by The Cynics, is gratefully used with a Creative Commons license.
1. Keywords
When searching for materials on your topic, reduce your essay topic to keywords. Keywords are the major words in your topic. They represent the main ideas you're looking for and they are usually nouns.
Keywords are essential tools for a researcher, whether rummaging through a catalogue, scouring an article database, or trying your luck with Google. Open this video to learn what keywords are, why you need them, how to choose them, and how to use them.
2. Subject Headings
Subject headings are brief descriptive phrases databases use to tell you what a book or article or any other item is about. Standardized by the Library of Congress, they give you a reliable idea what items are about so you can find relevant material. In the UofT Libraries' catalogue, click the subject headings option on the left-hand side to streamline your results to those on your topic.
Got a topic but no books yet? Using 3 sample topics, this video shows you how to search for a topic in the UofT Libraries' catalogue and then narrow by subject. "Yeah", written and performed by The Cynics, is gratefully used with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.
Peeking in catalogue and database records to see what the subject headings are is a good strategy. Often these headings are to guess--and without them you may miss important books and articles on your topic.
Click the sample keywords below on the left in the orange boxes to see what the real subject headings are. Click the white background to try another keyword.
Photo source: M. Imran.
Gratefully adapted with a PD license from Wikimedia.
Often before a scholar writes a book she explores an idea or theory in an article. Scholarly articles get published in magazines run by universities and academic associations. These magazines aren't actually called magazines, though. Instead, they're called scholarly journals.
Scholarly journals--like the Canadian Journal of Political Science--are essentially academic chat rooms. Unlike magazines, which aim to inform or entertain, scholarly journals exist to pursue knowledge.
Professors publish their research there, explore ideas there, and read others' work there. In the humanities, these articles have several characteristics: they're generally 10 or more pages, well-supported with cited sources, narrowly-focused on a specific topic, use subject-specific language, and--like the essays you'll have to write--have a thesis statement and supporting arguments.
To find articles in scholarly journals, you need a tool called an article database.
Besides finding articles, article databases round up book reviews, book chapters, dissertations, and even book titles. In most cases, you can limit your search to articles if that is all you want.
Here are the key steps to accessing a scholarly article in an article database:
Go to the UofT Libraries' homepage, click the Subjects A to Z link, and select the heading for your subject area (i.e. History).
You'll find a list of key article databases devoted to your subject area, as well as relevant research guides and online resources such as dictionaries and encyclopedias.
Click on a database title to open it. Most databases will let you narrow your search by language, publication date, and publication type (e.g. journal articles or book reviews), as well as by subject, title, or author.
Some articles are available online; these are called full-text. They should either open right away or after a few clicks. Every year, more and more articles appear in full-text. The bad news is you can sometimes only find an article in print. If no full-text link appears, try clicking the UTL Get-it button.
In a new window, this button either finds your article online or offers an automatic catalogue search for the journal title (not the article title) such as the Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies. Occasionally, UofT will not have the journal at all—when this happens, you'll get a note saying the article is not available, either online or in print. You'll get the option in this case to submit an Interlibrary Loan request for the article. Interlibrary Loan requests can take several days or more.
Getting an article in print means seeking out a range of tomes at one of the UofT libraries and picking out the volume for the year you want. The database can give you a citation (i.e. title, author, journal title, publication date, volume number, etc.), and sometimes even a summary (called an abstract)—but to get the full article, you have do more legwork.
To find a print copy yourself:
Copy the citation;
Type the journal title (e.g. International Affairs) into the catalogue search box;
Limit the search to Journal Title;
Make sure the library has the right volumes or years you want. Let's suppose the article you want is in the Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, volume 14 (2001). If the Kelly Library has the journal, scan the catalogue record to make sure it has the right volume. The Kelly Library, for example, has volumes 16 (2003) onwards, but nothing earlier.
There are two main kinds of Internet source: fee and free. Most university libraries--and many school boards--pay corporations so students can access the information these companies put online. Fee sources include articles from scholarly journals, e-books, and online encyclopedias.
These sources are generally no different in quality from the original print versions (if the print versions exist); sometimes, the online versions are more thorough and up to date.
Your instructors may advise you against using web sources. What they generally mean is not fee web sources sanctioned by your university library but free web sources on the free Web you can find in seconds using Google. Google is a great search engine; but most of the scholarly sources you'll need aren't accessible on the free web: they're beyond Google's reach, locked away in specialized databases that cost money.
Photo source: Amber Case.
Gratefully adapted with a CC license from Flickr.
Getting reliable information on the free Web can be a challenge. The Internet is crammed with so many websites--often churned out by people without qualifications--that sluicing out the gold from the crud can frustrate even the most patient surfer.
For scholarly research, the UofT library website is usually the best place to search. Books, databases, scholarly journals, primary sources, print and online tools---all these are available on the library site and waiting for you to use them.
Still, there are times in scholarship when the free Web is really what you need: when hunting down many government and non-governmental documents, publications, and statistics; when checking a citation; when getting a foothold in a new topic using Wikipedia, etc.. The most important thing to consider navigating the Web for research is your source. Find out what you can about who created the content on a website. To do that, there are 5 things you should check:
Contact information tells you the author may be reliable-it means he or she is taking some responsibility for the content on a website. About info tells you about the author, whether a person, a corporation, a government, a university or an international agency like the UN. It will help you decide whether the author has an interest in providing reliable information.
Most good sites have "last updated on ________" at the bottom of their pages. This note indicates the author is eager for up-to-date details. Of course, not all information needs constant updating.
Some texts are advertisements. Others, representing a particular group, present a biased point of view which may mislead you in your research. Beware of opinion pieces that lack balance, reason, and evidence.
Does the author skimp on details or cover the subject thoroughly? Are there references to published books and articles? Does the author provide any credentials?
Ads on websites sometimes mean a reliable author needs money to keep the website running. More often, though, they mean a less reliable author has other goals than pursuing scholarship.
Being commercial, ".com" sites are ideal for getting a reliable details about a corporation's products or services. But since their purpose isn't scholarly, their website information isn't likely to be either.
"gov" , "org", "edu" and nationality sites (.ca, .uk, .au, etc.) usually have a reputation to maintain in getting their facts right. These URLs are much more dependable for university research than ".com" sites.