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Course Guide ~ HIST 246: Law and Colonialism

Ten Tips for Better Research
 

  1. Find the best search box(es).
    Hamilton has a library catalog with searchable items numbering in the tens of millions. It licenses nearly 200 discipline-specific databases that index the scholarly literature of all of the areas of study offered by the college. Deciding where to start your search can make a big difference in what you find and how efficiently you can search.
     
  2. Enter the right words.
    Almost every database has its own unique vocabulary. Translating your initial keyword search into the search terms used in a database's subject headings can help you both expand and focus your searches.
     
  3. Use books or articles you already have to jumpstart your searches.
    If you already have a book that has proven particularly useful on your topic, search for it in our library catalog. You can then follow the subject headings in the catalog record to find other books on the same topic. If you already have an article that meets your needs, search for it in an discipline-specific database to find subject terms that lead you to similar articles.
     
  4. Mine the books and articles you have to find additional secondary and primary sources.
     
  5. Do not limit yourself to books and articles owned or licensed by our library.
    We can borrow items from other libraries for you and usually get them to you in 1-10 days.
     
  6. Research. Read. Repeat.
    Research, like writing, is typically a recursive process.
     
  7. Be resourceful and expand your skillset.
    There is more than one path to finding resources that could be helpful. There are more places to search than you may have used before.
     
  8. Adapt your project to the resources that are available to you.
    Not everything has been digitized. And, not everything can be accessed without travel, time, and luck. Plan accordingly.
     
  9. Document your work.
    Keep track not only of what you find, but where and how you find it. You may want to retrace your steps as your research evolves and changes. For bigger projects, a research and citation manager like RefWorks can help.
     
  10. Ask for help.

Getting Books and Articles

If you have a citation, here are some tips on getting your hands on that coveted article, book or chapter.

  1. Search the Hamilton Library Catalog.
  2. Enter an author’s last name and 2-3 keywords from the article or book title.
  3. Look for your book or article title in the first few results.
     
  4. Don’t see your title?
    Books
    • Change “Hamilton resources” to “Books at other libraries” next to the search box at the top of the page.
    • Select the “Check for available resources” link beneath the title.
    • Select the “Request from Interlibrary Loan” link.
    • Sign into ILLiad. Review the form, and select the "Submit Request" button. Books typically take at least a week to arrive.
    Articles
    • Select the "JOURNALS" link in the library catalog's banner to see if Hamilton provides access to the journal issue that includes your article.
    • If not, return to the LITS home page, and select the Interlibrary Loan (ILLiad) link.
    • Sign into ILLiad. Select the "New Requests" link in the banner, choose "Article" from the drop-down menu, fill in the form, and select the "Submit Request" button. Articles typically take 1-3 days to arrive.
    Chapters
    • Request book chapters by navigating to the LITS home page and selecting the Interlibrary Loan (ILLiad) link.
    • Sign into ILLiad. Select the "New Requests" link in the banner, choose "Book Chapter" from the drop-down menu, fill in the form, and select the "Submit Request" button. Book chapters typically take less than a week to arrive.

Finding the Best Search Box(es)

 

Books

The Hamilton Library Catalog is the best starting place to find print and electronic books that are immediately available to you. You can find a search box for the catalog at the top of the LITS home page. The catalog includes a lot more than books, so you will want to refine your results using the options on the right side of the results screen. Choose "Books" from the drop-down menu under "Resource Type" to see all our titles. We now have more electronic books than print books.

Use WorldCat if you want to start out searching for books at other libraries.

 

Articles

You can search for articles in the Hamilton Library Catalog or in a multi-disciplinary database like Academic Search Premier. There's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes, however, you may find it is more efficient to limit your search to scholarly articles in a specific area of study. You can get to these by selecting the "Guides" link on the LITS home page and navigating to Subject & Course Guides. There is a guide for each of the areas of study offered by Hamilton, and each of these starts off with a "We Suggest" section highlighting the most important databases in that discipline.

While you are on the Guides page, check out the dozens of other guides to help you discover and incorporate additional resources your need into your projects.


Finding the Right Words

 

What are subject headings?

Nearly every database you use to search for articles, books, and images contain item records that include subject headings. Below is an example from the Hamilton Library Catalog.

 

 

Subject headings are words or phrases used by a database to tag similar books, articles, etc. These subject terms are constructed using a controlled vocabulary that is unique to that databases. In the example above, "United States -- History -- Revolution, 1785-1783" is used to tag any book about the American Revolution. Other databases may use different terms to describe the same topic or concept. For example, America: History & Life, which indexes scholarly journals concerned with U.S. history uses the term "american revolutionary war, 1775-1783" to tag articles about the American Revolution.

 

How can I use subject headings to improve my searches?

You can use subject headings to both expand and focus your search. Selecting a subject heading in an item record can expand your search by presenting you with a list of books/articles on the same topic. It can also focus your search by eliminating books/articles that are only tangentially related to what you want to find.

A key to your success in searching most databases is making sure your keywords match words found in the database's subject headings. You can do this by:

  1. Starting your search with a few keywords that describe what you hope to find.
  2. Looking at the subject terms that appear most frequently in your results. For books in particular, you will find these in the item records for the titles that best match what your are looking for. For articles in subject databases, you will find these on your results page as an option for refining your results.
  3. Replacing your initial search terms with words from the subject headings you found.

 

For example, suppose you were searching PsycInfo for scholarly articles on the impact of sleep deprivation on the grades of university students. You might start with the following search:

 

 

After looking at the subject terms used in PsycInfo, you might change your search to the following:

 

 

By replacing your original keyword search with a revised subject search, you have both expanded the number of articles on your topic (imagine how many relevant articles might not have included the word "grades") and excluded a significant number of irrelevant articles (by going from 496 results to 71 results).

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