English

Choosing the right topic is the key to research. If your topic is too big, or too broad, you'll find too many articles. If your topic is too narrow, you won't find enough information for your assignment.

Watch this video to learn more about how to brainstorm and create a research question and topic:

Use these tips to find articles and information about literature:

• Try searching a different database or journal. Each one contains different articles.
• Search for the author's name or the title of one of their works.
• Try searching any of these with an author's name or title:
  • Time period or culture of one of the author's books
  • Genre
  • The author's other works
  • Literary elements, i.e. metaphors, plot points, etc.
  • Themes in the work you're researching

Keywords -- or search terms -- are the words you use to search in the library's databases. OneSearch and the library's databases will search for all the words you type into a search box. Instead of searching for a whole sentence or question, you need to break your topic down into keywords. You can mix and match different keywords to find different articles when you search.

Watch this video for more information:

Need more help finding articles and sources? Check out these guides for more search tips: