RESEARCH DOS & DON'TS

DON'T REINVENT THE WHEEL

Many scholars have spent their entire careers in your field, watching its
developments in print and in person. Learn from them! The library is full
of specialized guides, companions, encyclopedias, dictionaries,
bibliographies, histories and other "reference" sources that will help
orient you to a new area of research. Similarly, every works cited list can
be a gold mine of useful readings.

DO GET TO KNOW YOUR FIELD

ALL ABOUT: Getting to Know Your Field, from Harvard's

Unabridged: A Master Class in Library Research, runs through the range
of methods scholars use to learn more and stay informed about their
field.

DON'T TREAT EVERY SEARCH BOX LIKE GOOGLE

The current fashion in web design is the illusion of a single search box
that can read your thoughts. There is no such thing. This makes it all the
more important for you to pay attention to how a search system
operates and what is in it. Even Google Scholar and Google Books work
differently than the main Google web search, which has problems of its
own.

DO ADJUST YOUR LANGU AGE

Searching often means thinking in someone else's language, whether it's
the librarians who created HOLLIS's subject vocabularies, or the
scholars whose works you want to find in JSTOR, or the people of
another era whose ideas you're trying to find in historical newspapers.
The Search Vocabulary page on the general topic guide for literary
studies is a great place to start for subject vocabularies.

DON'T SEARCH IN JUST ONE PLACE

There is no place you can search that has everything. There are also an
infinite number of places you could search, but don't let that scare you
into relying on just one. Judicious triangulation is the key to success.

DO:

 Get in the habit of asking me for recommendations

 Develop a small handful of resources you always check, for

example:

o HOLLIS

o A scholarly index such as the MLA International

Bibliography, LION (Literature Online), or the IMB
(International Medieval Bibliography)

o A full-text collection of scholarship such

as JSTOR or ProjectMuse

o One of Google's full-text searches: Google

Scholar or Google Books
DO LOOK BEYOND THE L IBRARY'S COLLECTIONS

The library purchases and licenses materials for your use. There's plenty
of other material that's freely available or that you would need to travel
to see---please let me help you find it!