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When the time comes to do the bulk of your research, three different things can happen with your results.
- Too much information to sort through.
- Not enough information to use.
- Information that is tangential and irrelevant.
It’s not pleasant to be on the verge of writing a paper or script, only to find that your topic is too new, obscure, narrow, or broad to find enough supporting research to complete. So it’s important to try it out, and to change your topic, if you find yourself with too many, too few, or irrelevant results.
Some good general tools to try a preliminary search in are:
- LIONSearch
This tool is a single interface to the combined resources provided by the Penn State University Libraries. What that means is that LIONSearch covers almost everything that the library has access to, both print and digital collections. The Google of the library, if you will.
- Academic Search Complete
Comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 5,300 full-text periodicals - in other words, lots of great stuff!
- The CAT
This is the library’s traditional catalog, but it doesn’t only search books. Ebooks, videos, journals, and many other types of media can be found here as well
While you’re searching, if you find a few articles or books that you really like, use the GET IT button to find the full text, or the I WANT IT button to have a book pulled from the shelf for you for easy pickup.
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