A first step to searching for materials on your topic is to talk to experts who can suggest beginning sources to you: your professors and anyone else that they recommend.
There are three useful principals to remember and apply when searching any kind of electronic search tool (a library catalog, a digital library, a database, the internet, etc.)
1. A keyword search in any resource will point you to great initial resources, but you will not find all of the resources you need this way.
2. It is really important that you follow up on your initial searching by:
a) looking at the complete records to identify subject headings or descriptors that you can use to search further
b) carrying out seed research: go to the initial sources and check the footnotes, endnotes, and bibliographies to find further resources. It is also helpful to walk around the shelves in the library where you find initial print sources, as other related sources will be shelved in this area.
3. Use reference sources to start your research as well. There are great electronic and print reference tools (dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, and more) that can help you clarify and narrow down your topic and identify great starting resources.
Before reviewing the resources indicated below and on following pages in which to search for research materials, it is helpful to know how to do effective keyword searching.
In addition to those outlined in the box below, additional tools and strategies to do more sophisticated searching include the following:
Boolean operators should be in ALL CAPS
"Quotation Marks" allow you to search for an exact phrase: "mental health"
(Parentheses) allow you to create complex search strings with various clauses within parentheses:
(trauma OR distress) AND (migrants or Refugees) AND Mexico
Try one or two of the following strategies in the database you want to use. Not all of them are available in every database. Different strategies will change your results and help you target the articles you need.
Truncation is a search technique that broadens your search to include various word endings. To truncate your search terms, replace the word ending with an asterik *.
Limits provide database-specific recommendations for narrowing a search. Applying limits will filter out results that don’t meet your search requirements. This will save you time because you won’t need to look through pages of search results that don’t include the information that you need Each database offers different limits. Be sure to check them out to see how they can help you with your search.
For example: In the database, Historical Abstracts, you can filter your search results for peer review, publication date, document type, language, subject, etc.
The image below illustrates how applying limits will help you to narrow
your search results.
It's important to know that databases use subject headings to organize their articles. When you know the right subject headings for your topic, you can search more efficiently. Starting out on a new topic, you won't know the subject terminology. A simple way to find them is to start with a keyword search. When you find an article title that meets your needs, look for the subject headings assigned to that article. In most cases, those subject headings are hyperlinked and will take you to a list of articles with the same subject heading.
Scholarly articles often have extensive bibliographies, also called reference lists or works cited pages. Bibliographies include references to articles, books, and other relevant literature that were published before the article. Some databases provide links to the cited references so that you can look at those articles as well, which might provide more articles for you to use in your paper.
Cited References can help you find articles that are older than the one you are reading.
An Examplle:
Look at the example to the left. If you found a relevant article from 2003, you could look at the articles in the bibliography to see where your article got the information used to support their main points. These older articles can also be useful to your research, especially if you need to write a literature review.
You can use a similar method to find newer articles, by looking at the articles who have cited your 2003 article in their bibliographies. To find out more about this method, see the tab for Times Cited references.
Some databases, like Web of Science, include times cited references. Think of these as the opposite of a bibliography. Where bibliographies include references that are older than the article, times cited references are newer than the article.
Times Cited references can help you find articles that are more recent than the one you are reading.
An Examplle:
Look at the example to the left. Let’s say your professor doesn’t let you include references in your paper that are older than 2005. You are finding articles about your topic, but they are all too old. Even the best article about your topic was published in 2003.
Using times cited references, you could see which articles have cited the 2003 article. Chances are you will find one published a more recently that you could use for your paper.
When you find an article that you think will be a good to use, you can take advantage of “related articles” to find similar articles. Databases have different formulas for determining how an article is “related,” but it usually is a combination of same keywords and descriptors.
You can usually find a list of related articles on the results screen of the database.
Collections of in-depth, peer-reviewed summaries on a wide range of topics. Filter by subject area.
The Handbook of Latin American Studies: Annual Serial containing curated lists of seminal literature organized by theme. The Handbook has been published by the Library of Congress since 1936, when Lewis Hanke moved from Harvard to become the first Chief of the Hispanic Reading Room. Publications alternate by year, focusing on the Humanities and Social Sciences, respectively. Each group of theme-identified titles begins with a paragraph providing a literature (and often partly historiographical) review of that years' scholarly production. Currently, the most recent print volume is available in Geisel's Reference Section. Beginning with Vol. 75 (2023), annual installments are also available digitally through collaboration between the University of Texas and JSTOR. Annotations of particular titles (indexed by subjects as well as authors) can be accessed through the HLAS online platform, but without the brief thematic essays contextualizing them.
There are various ways to use Sage Research Methods to search for useful material and models for research and writing.
1) One option is to put keywords into the search box at the top
- the default order of the results will be by relevance; you can change this to title or publication date by using the drop down options from the Sort by: box
- you can also narrow your results using the faceting menu on the right: choose a particular format or kind of resource (books, reference materials, journal articles, datasets, case studies, video, etc.)
2) A second path is to choose one of the options below the search box (such as: find quick answers and definitions (reference); learn about quantitative methods; design a research project; learn from stories of real research)
- you can browse through the results, using the faceting menu on the left to narrow down further by method, discipline, or your level of education/research (undergraduate … etc.)
3) Sage Research Methods also includes a project planner, which provides you with a guide to the stages of carrying out a research project (finding topic, reviewing the literature (previously conducted research in this area), developing a researchable question, finding and gathering resources or data, writing, etc.)
Other kinds of Review Sources are also useful. See the Review Sources Research guide, which points to strategies and places to search for Book Reviews; Film Dance and Theater Reviews; and Research Literature (which points to Annual Reviews and Dissertations as well as particular databases). For example, book reviews can help you:
For places to search for books and dissertations, click on the "Finding Books & eBooks" and "Dissertations & Theses" tabs, respectively.
To locate academic journal articles, use the various databases listed on the "Finding Articles" tab. News sources are listed on another tab.
Much of the social science literature related to Latin America is published in "Grey Literature" (information produced by non-governmental organizations, research institutes, and other non-commercial publishing houses).
Primary sources are of particular importance in doing historical research or identifying first-hand perspectives on topics. Some of the information may be in archives that have been digitized. In some cases, the documents themselves may not yet be digitized, but finding aids to those collections help you identify if they can be helpful in your research. Beneath the main "Primary Sources" tab on this research guide are several specialized pages identifying ways to access different kinds of primary sources. These include Archives and Archival Information; Government Resources; Images and Maps; Statistics/Data Sets/Public Opinion; Newspapers; and Government Information; Primary-Source-Rich-Materials Accessible at UCSD [These include resources unique to UCSD and resources that UCSD pays to provide access to] and Primary-Source-Rich-Materials beyond UCSD [These include open-access digital libraries and materials that may be borrowed via inter-library-loan].
Please note that:
