Research takes time, and when you're working on research for a paper you might spend hours researching and try many, many searches before you're done. But you shouldn't spend hours searching and finding nothing. If you spend 20-30 minutes on your research and you're not finding anything remotely relevant, please stop what you're doing and contact your librarian! I can help you develop search search strategy, and maybe choose another database more suited for your topic.
This course page was created for students in Seminar in American Political thought: Meanings of Citizenship with Dr. Wynne Moskop, Spring 2023. Contact your Political Librarian (Rebecca Hyde) with questions or to make an appointment for an in-depth research consultation. For quick and/or general questions you can contact Rebecca or use our 24/5 chat assistance to get help with your research!
Some databases will include the full-text of articles, but others will include the button which links to full-text when available and if not available, gives you the option to request articles for free through Interlibrary Loan's Illiad service.
Books not available through SLU Libraries or MOBIUS may be requested for free through through Interlibrary Loan's Illiad service. Books requested through Interlibrary Loan can take several weeks to arrive and are not always available.
Keep track: Keep a list of the databases and search terms you used, that way you'll know what you already tried and where you had success!
Quotation marks: “social justice” searches for the phrase social justice. Searching without quotation marks will search for social and justice anywhere in the record.
Asterisk: citizen* searches for citizen, citizens, citizenship, etc.
Question mark: wom?n searches for women and woman
Save what you find: Use a citation management software (like EndNote or Zotero) or other method that works for you to keep track of articles and books you find.
Trace the Literature: Use an article’s reference list to find additional articles & use a citation database/index (like Web of Science or Google Scholar) to find a list of more recent articles that have cited a given article.
Download this Search Strategies Word Document for an editable guide to developing and documenting your search.
I suggest selecting a tool or method for keeping track of all the articles and books you find related to you research. Below are links and information about two of the most popular citation management tools.