Once you've planned out your search strategy, you have to decide where to search! Sometimes good information on your topic is located in lots of places, but sometimes you have to be more picky.
If what you want to write about just happened or is a very new phenomenon... you'll probably want to start with newspapers, news sites, and careful open web searching, because not enough time has passed for much if any scholarly work to be done on the topic.
If what you want to write about is relatively new but not extremely so... you'll probably be able to find articles on the topic from newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals. You can search for these sources in library databases (below) and/or using Google Scholar (below).
If what you want to write about is an established research interest... you should be able to find a book or book chapter that deals with it, possibly including a bibliography to point to you to other sources, like journal articles (check out SouthernSearch below).
If you are too unfamiliar with your topic to know how new it is... try to find out something about it from an encyclopedia or other reference work. This is where Wikipedia is both helpful and acceptable, especially for new phenomena that haven't made it into books yet!
To find books and other materials in the library, or online articles and ebooks, use SouthernSearch.
Note: this search may not work off campus. To access CQ Researcher off campus, use the following link:
Did you know that you can use a Google interface to search for scholarly articles? And that it will tell you when those articles are available through SCSU, both on campus and off? Just change your Library Links under Settings to Southern! Want more info? Click here.
