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Opticianry (Dale Mabry): As you find sources

Links and tips for your library research.

Find more sources, and evaluate and manage them

Select a link below to open or close additional information.

  Save your results

  • Notice links to save or email results, capture permalinks, and more.
  • If you email:
    • You may be able add a subject line or notes to remember why you're saving the item.
    • Consider creating an email folder just for your assignment.
  • Consider creating a Onedrive or Google Drive folder for your assignment to save citations, article PDFs, drafts of your paper, and more.
Whichever method you choose, saving your results, while keeping track of where you found them, will help you as you write your assignment.

  Save anything that looks promising

  • You can go back to it and really engage with it later.
  • When you start writing you can sift through and decide what to keep, or not.
  • It is common, and often helpful, to gather more sources than you may end up using.

  Use citation help

  • Look for the citation tool in the libary catalog Discovery search, or in a database. It could be a link labeled cite or citation help.
  • The citation tool will give you example citations in APA, MLA, and other popular formats.
  • Also refer to this Citation Guide.

  Notice other helpful tools

For example, some databases provide translations and audio recordings of articles.

  Note new search terms

  • Read over what you find.
  • A quick way to do this:
    • Scan the Details, Summary, or Abstract on the screen after you click the title.
    • Or, on the actual article, read first the Abstract (or Introduction, or Summary) and the Conclusion.
  • Why it helps:
    • Gives you additional keywords or search terms to try.
    • Helps you think about your topic and start writing your paper in your head.
  • Notice if there are linked Subject terms, the subjects covered in the article. If so, those links may launch new searches that may lead to other useful sources.

  Notice links to similar or related results

  • Some databases will display, on the results screen, links to other sources that are related to your search.
  • They might say something like "More like this" or "Find similar results".

  Notice the references or works cited at the end of a useful article

  • They are ources that the author(s) used. They may be useful to you, too.
  • This is actually one big reason that authors of scholarly articles cite their sources, to give readers the opportunity to access those sources for themselves.

  Filter your results by Subject

By using the Subject filter on your results list, you can reduce the number of possible sources to review, leaving those that cover your desired subjects .

  Evaluate what you are finding