Welcome
Welcome! This guide can help you with research in your subject area.
To get to the library's homepage click the logo to the left, and if you have more questions check out McKillop Library's FAQs, ask a librarian, or make an appointment to meet with a librarian.
Freely Available Online Research Strategies and Tools
Some search tools to try in addition to library databases
In addition to library databases such as JSTOR, EBSCO, Sage, and ScienceDirect, you may find a few open web search tools helpful.
A Harvard Think Tank search can be helpful for recent research related to issues which think tanks use to make policy recommendations.
Google Advanced Search allows you to search within certain domains, such as .gov for US government websites, .us, often used for state-level domains, or .mil for US military, policy, and international information.
Use the Find function for efficiency: In all web pages and PDFs, you can type CTRL F on a PC or on a Mac, Command F. Type a word from your search like such as a last name or an important concept in the search function that comes up and the browser will highlight instances of your search words.
Google Scholar has advanced features which can help with your research. First, you can let Google Scholar know that you have access to Salve's resources. Then whenever you search, if the library subscribes to the resource, you'll be shown a link "Find @ Salve" which you can click on to be routed to the library's access to the article.
First, log into your Google account (if you don't have one, you'll just have to do this process each time you use Google Scholar). Click on the three stacked lines to the top left of the page. Then click on "settings."
Next, choose "library links" and search "Salve Regina" and search. When the results come back, select Salve Regina University and save. If you've logged into your Google Account, this setting will be saved and access to Salve's subscription resources will show up every time you search Google Scholar. You can also use this process to see if other institutions you're affiliated can be linked to Google Scholar.
If you find a good article related to your topic, Google Scholar's "Cited By" feature allows you to see all the authors and articles that cited that topic.
Then you can "search within citing articles" to find the articles that were written after the first article you found that address the same issue you're researching.
This can be a really powerful tool to see the scholarly conversation around your topic. You can look at an article's bibliography to see the scholarly conversation that was happening before the article was published, and at Google Scholar's "cited by" to see the scholarly conversation that was happening after the article was published.
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