CRMJ 2685: Research Methods: Home

Personal Steps:

Identify emotions attached to topic.

Find reference sources and evaluate bias for a proper view of the topic

Intellectual courage to seek authoritative voices on topics that may be outside of thesis.

Source steps:

Authority established. Does the author have education and experience in that field?

Purpose/point of view of source. Does the author have an agenda beyond education or information?

Publisher. Does the publisher have an agenda?

List of sources (bibliography). Is the evidence sound?

Year of publication. Does the year of publication affect the information?

1. Go to the UW Libraries homepage.

2. Enter the title of the book or DVD (in double quotes) in the QuickSearch box and click the search icon.

3. On the search results screen, refine your search by selecting "Books, eBooks, and Media" from the drop-down menu selection box.

When you search any of the library's databases or use the QuickSearch box you may have to go through a few steps to find the full-text of the articles you need. If you don't see a direct link to the full text of the article, go through the following steps:

• Click the "Find It@UW" button .  If a full-text copy is available, a link to the article will appear.
• If no online copy is available, you may order the article by clicking the Interlibrary Loan button 

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:

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.