Help

      Home

1. Don't re-invent the wheel: use others' work to fuel your own research
2. Let your feet (and fingers) do the walking: physical browsing can be as good or better than electronic searching
3. Schedule for serendipity: browsing the library stacks is one of the best ways to discover new resources
   • Pulling books off the shelf and looking at the titles, tables of contents & indexes of adjacent books often leads to significant serendipitous discoveries.
   • When retrieving a known book from the shelf never just pull the book you came for. Always look at (and IN) the books around it.**
4. Get to know bibliographic records. They are your friends
5. Don't do it alone: Use library services (ILL, Librarians, Reference desks, Chat, etc.)
6. Google is good (but only to a point)
7. Start broadly then limit thoughtfully
8. Use Union lists: learn what is "out there"
9. Don't avoid library catalogs
10. Don't forget about print resources
11. Learning about the history of research in the subject and the relevant scholars is as important as (and is part of) researching the subject
12. If you find what looks to be a promising source, don't give up on it
13. Keep a good record of everything you look at (or at least everything you take notes from)
14. Join academic listservs They are an invaluable resource (for now and later)