Explore – Smartphone-based Activities: Put your investigative skills to the test with these quick interactive activities. Dig deeper into key concepts and understand how they might relate to your own research project via guided website searches and online discussion questions.

21.1 Narrowing your search

Go to your university’s subject library page or a journal in your discipline that you like. First, do a search on your research topic without any filters. How many results do you get? Now do another search, but filtering by a time period, a type of media, or a specific method. How significantly do your results change? How might you incorporate search filters to make sure you find enough literature, but don’t get caught up in information overload?

How else can you rein in your literature search? Does your project require any specific types of resources?

What keywords might you use to find relevant materials?