7.10 Fantastic Sources and Where to Find Them

Once you know the types of sources you’re looking for, it’s time to find them.

Conducting Effective Online Searches

The Internet is filled with sources: some of them useful, some of them not. Watch this short video to learn how to effectively find information on a search engine such as Google.

Finding Scholarly Articles

Most scholarly articles are housed in specialized databases. Libraries (public, school, or company) often provide access to scholarly databases by paying a subscription fee for patrons.  You can search for a journal title or view a list of databases by subject in these databases.

Databases that aren’t subject-specific are called general databases. Google Scholar is a free general scholarly database available to all who have access to the Internet.

Searching Databases

Sometimes, a little knowledge about how to do precise searches can save you a lot of time. To find relevant sources when searching Google or a research database you should.

1. Identify the main concepts in your research question. Stick to nouns. For example, if your research question was “How are students affected by the Vancouver Housing Crisis?” your main concepts would be ‘housing crisis’ and ‘students.’
2. Find related search terms. You might choose to use a thesaurus for this. For example, you might search for “affordability crisis” or (if you have discovered that some students have faced homelessness because they were unable to afford a place to live) “homelessness” or “housing vulnerability.”
3. Try using subject headings instead of keywords. When you visit the KPU library, you will see subject guides for different topics. You can also search for subject headings within databases.

4. When searching in databases (or Google) us quotation marks around phrases to make your search more specific. For example, you would search for “common cold” so you don’t get info on cold war or cold weather.

5. Use wildcard and truncation symbols to broaden your search. For example, if you type “wom?n” into a search engine, it will show results for “woman’ and “women.” If you type “mathemat*” into a search engine, it will show results for both “mathematician” and “mathematics.”

6. Use phrases like “and” and “not” to make your search more specific. For example, if you were searching a job board to try to find a job as a network administrator, but you kept finding positions as a network manager, you might search for “network administrator NOT manager.”

When Are News Sources Helpful?

• You need breaking news or historical perspectives on a topic (what people were saying at the time).
• You need to learn more about a culture, place, or time period from its own sources.
• You want to keep up with what is going in the world today.

When Are News Sources of Limited Use?

• You need very detailed analysis by experts.
• You need sources that must be scholarly or modern views on a historical topic.

Other Types of Sources

News articles are typically written by journalists who are experts in investigating and get paid for their work. Usually, journalists will work with an editor to make sure that their work is accurate and fair. Depending on your topic, however, you might seek sources such as:

Social Media Posts

Sometimes, experts in a subject will engage in public scholarship over Twitter or social media platforms. For example, professional historians will often share their work with the public on Twitter by relating current events to historical moments. The benefit of this type of scholarship is that it can be very current, and you can often see different scholars interact with one another. The downside is, however, that this information hasn’t been vetted by anyone. You may be witnessing an expert’s “rough draft” thoughts, and they might change their mind based on new information or the peer review process. To know if you should trust a social media post, you’ll also have to know a lot about who’s posting and if they’re credible.

Blog Posts

Though blogging is less popular now than it once was, blogs are still a great way to find out current information about a topic in a format that’s more detailed than social media allows for. For example, a cybersecurity expert might tweet about a new threat, but they might then write a blog post that outlines their concerns more explicitly and provides extensive proof. Remember that blogs are not vetted by an editor, and often bloggers have a motivation to sell products or services.

Archives

If your topic involves the past, you might check out an archive. Many museums make their collections available online through archives.

Attribution

“Fantastic Sources and Where to Find Them” from Business Writing For Everyone by Arley Cruthers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.