In your younger years, you probably just researched topics then wrote assignments that gave basic information about a specific topic, like panda bears or the Titanic. Now that you’re a college student, your research will be more specific, more complex, and more interesting. You will want to think of your research as finding the answer to a question. For example, “Why are panda bears going extinct?” or “Which people are most responsible for the sinking of the Titanic?”
Research is iterative, which means it is repetitive and cyclical. Researchers don’t research a question just one time. They continually refine their research question and find new sources based on all the new information they’re learning. That’s why “research” is different from “search:” you’re literally searching for information over and over again.
For you, this means that you may start out with one research question (“Why are panda bears going extinct?”) and end up with a more complex and interesting one (“What new infrastructure is causing the isolation and fragmentation that is so harmful to pandas, and are there reasonable alternatives that are safer for pandas?”)
Here's what's especially cool about research: It's never finished. Everything is not known, and we are constantly learning new information about ourselves and our world. So you should always keep questioning authority, facts, and history because that is how new information is created!
Some databases are general, and have information about all different topics. Others are more specific and only hold information about a certain field of study. The good news is that you don't actually have to know exactly what database you want to search! You can enter one search term in the library website and the system will search ALL of the databases for you.
On the other hand, if you do happen to know which database you want to find sources from, you can easily limit your search to just one database.
Here are a few examples of databases available through SPCC.
It takes a long time to become an excellent researcher, but your first college classes are a great time to start learning. Here are the basic steps to doing academic research in a database:
Read your assignment carefully and determine what kinds of sources your instructor expects you to use. It will often be a combination of scholarly sources and more common sources from the internet.
Think of a research question and some search terms that might help you come up with scholarly articles that answer your question.
Access the library databases from the library website.
Search the databases using your search terms, and using appropriate filters.
Read the titles and abstracts of the articles you find to see if they’re helpful.
Refine your search terms and your filters until you find the results you’re looking for. (It rarely works the first time!)
Read the articles that you found.
Write your assignment, properly citing all the sources you used.
Check out this helpful video to show you how walk you through the process of searching the SPCC databases. (Link to finding scholarly sources seminar)