Pondering research for a new assignment or project can often feel like tackling a new recipe that’s way too complex. You might have the ingredients (your topic), but how or where do you find the right cooking techniques, tools, and ideas or knowledge to ensure that the resulting dish is a masterpiece? Or what if you don’t even know what you want to make? As a team that doesn’t always love to cook but always loves to eat, we speak from experience when we say that the library’s resources can serve as a fun and user-friendly culinary guide for the lost. We’ll lay out a few tips and tricks that we hope will steer you into Top Chef territory, but don’t take our word for it: replicate our steps yourself and see if it doesn’t make you feel like your novice days are behind you.
Step 1: What do you really feel like eating? (i.e., Are you sure you want to eat that?)
Just like you’d carefully read the recipe you’re thinking of making, carefully read your assignment instructions (or project/dissertation requirements). You want to make sure that you start with the end in mind. After all, if your proposed dish would be served on your family’s pizza night, a veggie-forward dish might put you in the doghouse. If you need to include multiple peer-reviewed resources, for example, you probably won’t want a topic that was just invented in May. If you’re expected to write an in-depth paper on how a topic has impacted you personally, the ideal topic probably won’t be one you know absolutely nothing about. The library’s guide on choosing a topic can help you make the right recipe for the meal you really want (or need).
Step 2: Gather your ingredients.
You know you’ll need to use the library databases for a hearty result, but some will fare better than others depending on what you’re trying to achieve. If you need to find industry profiles, for example, a nursing database probably isn’t your best bet. We do have subject guides presenting some commonly-used ingredients for your specific dish, but you can also visit our Research Databases page and limit to a subject to view options that way. It’s sort of like grocery shopping, but way cheaper.
Step 3: Know your gadgets.
We all know that the library databases are like the premium luxury oven for research, and hopefully you followed step 2 carefully enough to appreciate that – but there are other tools that can help. For example, Google Scholar can be like a microwave in this analogy. You don’t want to use it to cook the main elements, but using it for a supplemental side has definite benefits. Or you could use RefWorks to organize your citations; it’s kind of like a recipe organizer, because it’ll keep your citations in a safe place, and some of those might come in handy for a future paper (or meal).
Step 4: Start cooking.
Use the library’s search strategy guide to help you through the steps without burning anything. And just like a good sauce, those tips will help keep those search results from being too watery (i.e., too many) or too dry (too few). From selecting keywords to limiting where in the article those terms appear, there are many techniques that will help you craft a tasty and refined set of search results for your topic.
Step 5: Taste frequently.
Before serving your dish, you must taste and refine it - but it usually works better if you do this throughout your cooking. Do you tend to oversalt, like me, or forget to season it altogether? Maybe you have too many of one resource type (like encyclopedia chapters), and forgot to include the peer-reviewed articles expected of you. In addition, not all ingredients are created equal, or are easy to work with. Revisit step 4’s tips if you need to, but also check out our guides on evaluating sources and APA citations to ensure a smooth finish.
So, what cool new recipe/topic have you been considering or working on lately? Let us know in the comments, along with any tips that might help other budding chefs. Just be sure to take it slow... just like amazing meals take time, library research shouldn’t have to feel like a Mise En Place Relay Race.
Traci Avet is a librarian who has worked in libraries for over twenty years, and has had the pleasure of experiencing vast card catalogs and due-date card stamping.