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Research for Writers: Research, Articles, & Databases

This guide is intended to help you with research for writing, whether you need to find historical facts or assistance with form.

Quick Tip

Be sure to use commands, called Boolean Operators, to further specify your search. 

Quick Tips for Google

  • Be clear about what you need and eliminate any extraneous information or words. This means you don't want to type in full sentences or questions, just pull the key words or phrases (just like you would in academic databases). 
  • Boolean Operators work in Google too. See the information above in "Quick Tip" to learn more about Boolean. 
  • Think about who else would care about this information and how they (and therefore you) might phrase it. Looking for information on women married during World War II? You would want to search "war bride" or "GI bride" and not something like "women married during the war." 
  • Don't know much about your topic yet? Start broad and work your way down. For instance, if you are researching the neighborhood of Greenpoint in the 1960's you might want to start by researching the neighborhood first. Run a search for Greenpoint, and then narrow down to your dates as you gather more information and can properly adapt your search. 

Information Creation Timeline

Information is created in different formats and at varying times. The formats are usually dependent on the time in which the information is being produced. This process is sometimes called the Information Cycle or Timeline. 

Some forms of information do not adhere to this timeline, but rather can be created or modified at any time (for example: social media posts or online encyclopedias).

For more detailed information on these formats see the TRU (Thompson Rivers University) Libraries Information Cycle page

For more information about utilizing resources from different time periods see our Primary Sources page.

We are indebted to the VIU (Vancouver Island University) Library Information Cycle page for some of this content.

Google and Academic Databases

Google, and more appropriately Google Scholar, can be valid places to search for articles and organizations. However, subject specific databases will have more advanced search options and articles. Here are some key differences between databases and Google.

  Library Databases Google Google Scholar
Types of
Information
You Can Find
  • Scholarly journal articles
  • Newspaper articles
  • Reviews
  • Theses & dissertations
  • Empirical evidence
  • Popular, commercial, educational websites
  • Organization websites
  • Directories
  • Current news & events
  • Few free journal articles
    & books (many academic publications are not free)
  • Educational websites
  • Theses & dissertations
  • Conference publications
    & presentations
  • Scholarly journal articles
    (but access will be restricted
    to free resources,
    see below for how to set
    up SLC links)
Credibility & Review
  • Subject specific books
    and articles
  • Evaluated for accuracy
    and credibility
  • Lack of control allows
    anyone to publish
    material
  • Usually not evaluated for accuracy & credibility
  • Some resources evaluated
    for accuracy & credibility,
    but not through Google,
    so need to verify review process for each publication
Discovery
  • Database functionalities
    allow users to search
    for & find more relevant results
  • Less ability to search
    for & retrieve precise
    results
  • Not releasing 
    information on
    algorithms, paid
    products can float
    to the top
  • Less ability to search for
    & retrieve precise results
  • Not releasing information
    on algorithms, therefore
    it is not known why
    results float to the top

 

Suggested Databases for Researching:

Depending on what you are researching you will want to pick a database that corresponds to that topic or utilize a multidisciplinary database (like ProQuest Research Library). You can find a link to all of our databases below. There you can limit by subject or even content type. 

All databases that search reviews can be found here

Can't Find the Full Text?

If a database doesn't have the full text of an article you are looking for, you can copy and paste the title of the article into our catalog to see if we might have that item here. If we don't have it, request it through Interlibrary Loan (ILL).