Getting Started with Online Library Research

This guide is designed to help with research guidance, whether formulating a research topic or searching for relevant information

What is Library Research?

Introduction

(Molly Fuller Abbott, Wikimedia Commons Image, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Library and online research is a key step in most of the major assignments of your college classes, and in many careers. However, it may be not easy to know where to start. Never fear! This page will assist you in taking the first steps towards completing a project with as little pain as possible.

Generating Questions and Identifying Your Focus

This is an important early (and continuing) step! There are generally three ways you are asked to write a a research paper:

Your professor provides you with a general topic of which you study a particular aspect
Your professor provides you with a list of possible topics
*Your professor leaves it up to you to choose a topic and you only have to obtain his/her permission to write about it before beginning

*Picking a topic is research! Where do you begin? This guide aims to help!

Research as Inquiry

(Steely Library, Northern Kentucky University, 2018)

The Basics

What is research? Well, according to Cambridge Dictionaries Online, it is:

re·search: NOUN: 1. a detailed study of a subject, especially in order to discover (new) information or reach a (new) understanding.

This definition covers many different activities involved in your information search, and oftentimes these activities overlap with one another.

Research type	Essential characteristics
1. Find the population of each country in Africa or the total (in dollars) of Japanese investment in the U.S. in 2002.	A search for individual facts or data. May be part of the search for the solution to a larger problem or simply the answer to a bar bet. Concerned with facts rather than knowledge or analysis and answers can normally be found in a single source.
2. Find out what is known generally about a fairly specific topic. "What is the history of the Internet?"	A report or review, not designed to create new information or insight but to collate and synthesize existing information. A summary of the past. Answers can typically be found in a selection of books, articles, and Web sites. [Note: gathering this information may often include activities like #1 above.]
3. Gather evidence to determine whether gang violence is directly related to playing violent video games.	Gathering and analyzing a body of information or data and extracting new meaning from it or developing unique solutions to problems or cases. This is "real" research and requires an open-ended question for which there is no ready answer. [Note: this will always include #2 above and usually #1. It may also involve gathering new data through experiments, surveys, or other techniques.]

Finding your Focus

Focus

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Clarifying the focus may take a bit of trial and error. Even if you have only a very general idea of what you will write about, the research process can help you. Here is one way you could approach this:

Identify concepts and terms that describe the topic or overall focus (or that present your topic statement or argument if you have progressed that far). What are some words that relate to what you want to write about?
Identify and review relevant resources to help you refine and deliver your topic or focus in a concise way. More on this, further in the guide!
Often, research papers aim for you to develop your own ideas and arguments. So, as this develops, identify and review credible sources to broaden, modify, or strengthen your work. Track your sources!

Tip 1: These processes may or may not proceed in a "logical" order. Often, the process is not in a single direction, with one "step" after the other (instead, it very likely involves some twists and turns!!)

Tip 2: If you have a resource you like or have been assigned to use, review the references cited by the authors in footnotes, endnotes, or the bibliography. This can help give ideas and also help locate additional research on the topic. Don’t forget you can ask a librarian for help!

Ways library and online research can support you

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Consulting relevant resources (and even running into and setting aside irrelevant resources) can support you in developing and including the following:

New ideas, facts, and perspectives (information that shapes your focus; informs your argument)
Contextual information (supportive information that is historical, socioeconomic, geographic, etc.)
Counterarguments/sources of criticism (items that are relevant to your topic, but from a counter point of view - something you may argue against)
Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary insights (how others are working with these or applying these ideas)

Tip: Remember to keep careful notes at every stage. You may think you’ll remember what you have searched for and where you found things, but it’s easy to forget.

Page Credits

In addition to content produced by S. Warden and the Reference Librarians at JDHL, the content for this module is drawn from the following sources:

RESEARCH: Definition in the Cambridge English dictionary. (n.d.). https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/research

North Carolina State University Libraries. (2014, May 1). Picking your topic IS research. https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/videos/picking-your-topic-is-research

Northern Kentucky University, Steel Library. (2018, Oct. 3). Research as Inquiry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HUbOlaTeoU&t=3s

Adapted from PALNI Information Literacy Module 1.
All of the PALNI Information Literacy Modules are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.