Guides: First Year Guide: Research Starting Points

Keep in mind:

Research as Inquiry
Research is iterative and depends upon asking increasingly complex or new questions whose answers in turn develop additional questions or lines of inquiry in any field.

Searching as Strategic Exploration
Searching for information is often nonlinear and iterative, requiring the evaluation of a range of information sources and the mental flexibility to pursue alternate avenues as new understanding develops.

Information Has Value
Information possesses several dimensions of value, including as a commodity, as a means of education, as a means to influence, and as a means of negotiating and understanding the world. Legal and socioeconomic interests influence information production and dissemination.

Ask Us

Alexandra (Alex) Wohnsen
Research Librarian for
Teaching & Learning Initiatives
awohnsen@hamilton.edu
315-859-4321
Make an appointment for research help

Getting Started

Have a plan when conducting research:

Consult reference sources for context.

Find reference sources with facts and summaries to improve your initial searches
Use bibliographies from encyclopedia articles to identify key books, articles, and authors related to your topic

Find the starting point:

Library Catalog - Searches books, videos, music, and other resources at Hamilton. All Searches
Academic Search Premier - Indexes journals across disciplines. General Searches
Subject Guides - See We Suggest sections for discipline-specific databases. Advanced Searches
How Do I Find... - News sources, images, statistics, primary sources, and more. Targeted Searches

Keep searches simple.

Start with a keyword search
Enter no more than two or three words connected by the word AND
Focus your search by using subject headings

Refine your search.

Repeat your search after reading some of the information gathered in the previous step
Mine the footnotes of books and articles on your topic for additional sources

Get help.

Consult a library research guide
Ask a librarian

General Databases

Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
Index of nearly 8,000 scholarly journals and popular magazines in all areas of study. Includes the full text for more than 4,600 titles. Coverage varies by publication.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Full text of leading academic journals from the humanities, social sciences, and sciences dating back as far as 1665. Hamilton provides access to 17 JSTOR collections with more than 2,300 titles. Journal runs are complete from volume one up to the most recently published issues (past 5 years), which must be accessed elsewhere.
Library owns:
Arts & Sciences collections I-XV
Business
Life Sciences collection
Security Studies collection
Sustainability collection
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Index of articles from over 10,000 journals in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. In addition to multidisciplinary searches, Web of Science provides tools to track citations to individual articles from their date of publication to the present. Now includes Book Citation Index and Conference Proceedings Citation Index. Coverage: 1900-present.
Getting Started with Web of Science
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First Year Guide: Research Starting Points

Keep in mind:

Ask Us

Getting Started

General Databases

Finding Other Types of Sources

Research Starting Points Quiz