#anyway went to check the other library's website and they also. only have the ebook.

[athena14044]

I get an email that my hold is in at the library. "oh cool," I think, "the third book in the thrawn trilogy. I haven't finished the second book yet but I'm glad it came in." I open the email. It's the novelization of the last jedi.

[ittybittytatertot]

Online Research, a quick guide

Whether you're writing a school paper, fact-checking an article, or just curious to learn more, online research is something everyone on the net should know how to do.

Step 1: Get Your Key Words Right

As easy as it would be to say step one: open Google, the reality is, that’s rarely the step people are confused by. What the hell do I type to get relevant results? That’s the real question.

Advanced search tools like searching between certain dates, searching specific URLs, excluding certain search terms are infinitely helpful (learn more about using advanced Google searches here), but remember to choose words that are prevalent to what you’re trying to know. 

If you’re trying to find a word you don’t know/can’t remember you can often look up “(subject) vocabulary”, “(subject) glossary”, “types of (subject)”, to find the search term you actually want.

Try to leave out prepositions, is/am, what/where/why/etc., You don’t always want more search words, you want better search words.

Let’s say I want to look up Marina Abramović, but I can’t remember her name, I could look up “famous female performance artists,” if I remembered a name of one of her famous pieces, I could look up “the artist is present,” Or maybe I’m trying to find a piece I don’t remember the name of. I could look up “Marina Abramović flower gun scissors” and find it was called Rhythm 0.

But let’s say you want to more than names or pictures. Or maybe the knowledge I’m looking for is much more obscure. That leads us into,

Step 2: Go Beyond Google

Google, despite being a loathsome capitalistic entity selling all of our data and destroying the concept of privacy, is a pretty good search engine. But it’s not the only tool in your research tool belt.

Wikipedia, despite being infamous for misinformation, has sources attached to each article. When you see a sentence that ends in a little number on Wikipedia? Click on that. Go to the footnotes, scroll through the sources. Many of them may be available online (though watch out for circular sources, sometimes a wiki article may cite a source that cites the wikipedia article!)

Going deeper than Google and Wikipedia, try jstor, Project Gutenberg, Cornell University Press’s online database, or specific universities and libraries. Here’s Harvard’s online library! You can even search the Library of Congress if you want!

Universities and your local library (or at least County or State library) have their own websites as well. It can be hit or miss with stuff available online, but it’s worth looking, and if you end up going in to rent a physical book? Well, that’s pretty cool, too right?

While these sites may not be as neat, speedy, and user-friendly as Google, more specific filtering tools, as well as useful citations.

These specific sites will also offer more narrowed results than Google, which is what you want! Because if I type in “intersectional feminsim” to Google, I’m going to get a popular New York Times article or a random blog instead of a peer-reviewed academic paper. 

Step 3: Battling Paywalls

Unfortunately, once you find an article/essay/book you want to read, it may be stuck behind a paywall. If you don’t have the money to pay for it (understandable) don’t have the time/energy/know-how to hack your way in (also understandable), you still have options.

1. Read the preview/forward*

Often times there will be some kind of preview, forward, or summary you can read even if you don’t have access to the full article. A well-written summary will get across the thesis of the text even if it doesn’t go in depth. It isn’t perfect, but it will give you a sense if the full paper is even worth pursuing.

*This option is great if you’re just trying to fill out a bibliography for a research paper.

2. Google it

I know, I spent all that time talking about how using these other sites is the way to go! But, like I said, Google is, for all it’s faults, good at what it does. 

If you type in the name of the article you want and its authors, and maybe .pdf, you might find it among Google’s ebooks or hosted on some .edu (though don’t download things from sources you don’t trust! Pdf’s can come with viruses.)

3. University Logins and Password Sharing!**

In college? Cool! Your school is almost guaranteed to be partnered with one database or another (often multiple!) 

Try logging into one of these sites with your student credentials. The sites will often list which universities they have partnerships with and/or your school’s website/library will list which databases they’re partnered with and offer directions for how to login. Speaking from experience, this circumvented the paywall for articles/essays I wanted to read roughly 80% of the time (caveat: I went to a large university partnered with many databases).

Not in college? Also cool! But do you have a friend or family member in college? Possibly! 

Ask if you can borrow their login info. If that’s a no go, ask if they can download a pdf/ebook for you.

**This method usually only works as long as you’re an active student of the school. Alumni do not always retain access to logins like this.

4. Contact the author***

I get it, I have social anxiety too, but there’s no harm in a little email or facebook message or something. I wrote a script for you.

Hello (_author’s name_), 

I am doing research on (_subject_), and am very interested in reading your paper (_insert article title here_), but (insert reason you can’t access it: i.e. you’re a broke college student/it’s behind a paywall/you can’t access it online). Would it be possible for you to share the paper with me? 

Thank you, (_your name_)

Often times, the author is not making any money from their article/essay’s publisher. This is especially true if the text is older/out of print. Many will be happy to share their work.

***Not the best option for students who procrastinate as the author can take a while to get back to you if they ever respond at all.

***Also this works less well with books. But try asking anyway.