A low-effort, high-reward library research strategy
Are you looking for a simple strategy to get you started in your library research? We have you covered.
Sometimes the tips in this blog might be all you need, but others you may need to go a bit further and use the tips on our Skills for study pages. If your assignment instructions use a term like ‘systematic review’ or ‘systematic search’ then the strategy below is not one you should use. Try our Systematic review or Systematic search LibGuides instead.
Don’t do your research backwards
In the most popular article of the first ten years of The Conversation, Deakin Philosopher Patrick Stokes wrote that he advises students, ‘You are not entitled to your opinion. You are only entitled to what you can argue for.’
When you submit your work at university, you’ll need to justify what you say with references to research evidence and expert analysis. It’ll often help if you show you’re familiar with the conversations experts are having about a topic in places like journal articles and books.
Trying to find scholarly sources to support an existing opinion informed by non-scholarly sources is like trying to find a needle in a haystack – only the needle may not even be there to find. It is easier to first find a range of sources on the topic you are researching and then construct your argument based on reading those sources.
Read before you search
If your unit chair has given you a reading list, look through as many of the readings as possible that cover your topic. This will serve several purposes:
- It will provide you with the background knowledge necessary to understand academic writing on that topic.
- It will alert you to the words and phrases used when experts discuss the topic, and you can use those words and phrases in searches to find more sources to draw on in your writing.
- Each reading will usually contain a reference list, so you can find and read the books and articles from that.
If you don’t have a reading list, or you still need further background, consider using reference works, which will perform a similar function to the readings in a reading list. The most popular reference work is Wikipedia, but the library also has specialist reference works on all subjects. These reference works contain entries on various topics within the subject, written by experts. You can find them by searching for a broad subject and adding (encyclopedia OR handbook) to your search.
Use the ‘cited by’ function in Google Scholar
When you use a reference list in a reading that your unit chair gave you, or in a reference work, you are following the research trail backward in time. That’s because a source can only cite the research that was written before it.
You can also follow the research trail forward in time using Google Scholar, but before you do that, make sure you set up Google Scholar to access items in Deakin Library and/or install our bookmarklet tool.
When you have a key book or article on your topic, type the title into Google Scholar, then click the ‘cited by’ link underneath the article description. This will give you a list of books and articles that have included your original source in their reference list.
If there are too many results in the ‘cited by’ list, you can refine your results by ticking the ‘search within citing articles’ box, and searching for some specific keywords.
Do some more searching if necessary
If you don’t have enough information to write your assignment, it’s time to do some searching. You can find plenty of useful instructions and tips about how to prepare and plan your search strategy, and how to search for different types of information sources on the library website.