CRES 299: Racial Passing in African American Literature (Knight)

Databases are tools designed to help you search the scholarly (and other) articles and resources available to you through the Holy Cross Libraries and beyond. Some of the databases available to us link directly to the resource it highlights, while other's may only provide you the information on how to locate an article elsewhere. This is when you will have to request the article from Interlibrary loan. Because of this, we recommend you start your database research early on in your project - to allow time for resources to make their way to you. For help with Interlibrary loan, please see the video tutorial on the homepage of this guide. 

Types of Databases

There are two main kinds of research databases that you might encounter: 

- General databases, like Academic Search Premier and JSTOR, which have a little bit of everything; articles in different subject fields, primary sources like scientific research studies or historical sources, news articles, videos etc.

 - Databases for specific subjects or types of sources (ex - newspapers, historical sources, videos, etc.) 

In addition, you will probably use CrossSearch, the search box on the homepage of the Libraries' website. CrossSearch is a discovery tool which searches many (though not all) databases at once. CrossSearch is like a library version of Google -- it is a great place to get your search started and find many sources at once. If you feel like Cross Search is overwhelming, try one of the suggested databases for CRES and see what results you get.

When you search a web tool like Google, you are searching every word of every page of every document, from beginning to end. There are no rules about what goes into Google, so you get a mix of everything.  And, Google can't always tell the difference between a page or article that is all about your topic, and a page or article that mentions your topic only once or twice. 

When you search in the library research tools, like the catalog or (most) research databases, you are actually just searching short "profiles" of the book, article, or other source that you are looking at, rather than the whole source. Because the profiles are very short, searching for entire sentences or phrases does not usually work well in library resources.

But, if a source comes up because its profile mentions your topic, it's much more likely that the source will actually be on your topic. And while the research tools have many different types of sources in them, they're all published sources, so they've been checked for quality on at least a very basic level. 

When you're using databases, you want to use keywords to search for materials related to your topic. Lets say your project is about the book Sula by Toni Morrison. Here are examples of key words I might use to find results:

Sula, Toni Morrison, black women, feminism, literature, black feminism, character analysis

You can search for these terms individually or try combining them for more refined results. Try using search terms like AND, OR or NOT.

If I use the terms "Sula" and "black Feminism" and "feminism" I will get results that contain all of those search terms together.

Sula and ("black feminism" OR feminism) will bring up results that include clybourne park as well as either review or critcism or both words together.

Use NOT when you want to exclude a word or phrase.

Here are some general tips to guide you in choosing your search terms:

• Use concepts and other nouns as your keywords.  Think of words that are likely to be used in titles (or that you have seen in titles).
• Spend some time brainstorming keywords and search terms. Use the subject headings/tags in each database to help you think of search terms. For example, if you search for Sula and race, the subject headings might also contain words like racism, race relations, whiteness, etc. 
• Use an asterisk * after the root of a word to find all forms of a word. For example, a search for race* will find sources that use not only the word race, but also terms like racial and racism. 

Bonus Tip:

When you find a good article, look at its References or Works Cited list. That will often lead you to other useful sources. You can also look at information such as the name of the journal or the author for ideas of other ways to search.

Searching for Images

Visual aides are often incorporated into research assignments such as presentations, video essays, and even regular old class papers! It's important to find images and graphics that represent your points and that you have permission to use. Below are some image search portals you can use to find images that are available for public use. Remember: unless an image has a creative commons license that says otherwise, you HAVE to cite where you obtained an image from. This means you need to access it through legitimate means - no copy and pasting off a word press blog and calling it a day!

Google Searching Images

If you're not finding anything through the above sources, you can try google searching for your image and see what kind of results you get. When taking an image from an online source, you want to make sure:

• That you are taking the image from it's original online source. For example, taking a photo from an online library or archives collection or a photo that was taken for use for a specific newspaper or magazine is okay. Taking a photo from a website that belongs to another source is not considered fair use.
• That you are able to create a legible citation for the photo. See the MLA citation guidelines to learn how to craft photo citations.