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Where Do I Start?: How to find online resouces

How do I find with magnifying glass

Databases A-Z

Find the best databases for your research. You can search by name, subject, or type to find a helpful database for your research needs. 

All UW Libraries Subject Guides

Subject Guides can be a great place to get general research help in a specific subject area.

Searching Multidisciplinary Databases

The following are three general databases. Academic Search Premiere and ProQuest Central are useful for any academic subject. Web of Science is useful for academic subject areas in and outside of the sciences. These databases are a good place to start to locate general information. If you have a clearly defined research topic, then try using one of the more specific databases.

Search QuickSearch Scopes

UW Libraries QuickSearch: includes the collections of the University Libraries, UW Law Library, and the American Heritage Center. Searches almost everything.

Use this QuickSearch link to search Books, E-Books & Media.

Lastly, use this QuickSearch link to search Course Reserves.

Interlibrary Loan: UW students, faculty and staff can request books, journal volumes, journal articles and other materials, regardless of whether it is available in the UW Libraries, online or in libraries around the world. A free service! Interlibrary Loan link.

Subject Search in QuickSearch

Subject listings in the UW Libraries collections are useful for finding information organized around a specific topic. Performing a subject search can often find more specific results than a generalized "keyword" search.

On the UW Libraries homepage, enter a subject in the QuickSearch box and press enter. On the search results page, click on Advanced Search to the right of the search box. in the Advanced Search window, select "KEYWORD"  and "CONTAINS EXACT PHRASE" and then click on Search.

Keyword contains exact phase "Veterans-Services for-United States-Handbooks, manuals, etc.

Locate an Article by its Title

One way to locate an journal or periodical article is to do a search for the title in the QuickSearch box on the UW libraries' home page.  Place the article title in double quotation marks to search as an exact phrase (to reduce the number of false hits in the results list).  You may only need to search on the first few words if the title appears to be fairly unique.  Omit any subtitles (i.e., words following a colon) as those words do not always get indexed as part of the title in the article record (i.e., in the metadata). 

Example:

QuickSearch box

If you are unable to locate the article using this approach, try searching for the journal title and/or article using the eJournal search method.  If it appears that the UW Libraries' collection does not include the desired article/journal, an InterLibrary Loan request can be submitted.

Primary and Secondary Sources

What is a primary source?

A primary source is an item like a diary, map, data, first-person event account, or anything else that provides a perspective from the time it was created.

  • For example, you could review a letter from an immigrant to Laramie in 1900 to understand their perspective on moving to the city and adapting to Wyoming. 

What is a secondary source?

A secondary source is an item like a peer-reviewed journal or anything that analyzes primary sources. A secondary source usually pulls together information from other secondary sources as well as primary sources.

  • For example, you could find a peer-reviewed journal article on the impact of a certain group's culture on a city. It is likely to include information the author gathered from primary sources as well as other scholars who focus on the same topic.

Where to Find Primary Sources