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Welcome
Your assignments at university are an invitation to join a scholarly conversation by exploring topics in depth, formulating questions, examining the research in order to build an arugument and draw your own conclusions. A good research topic is one that sparks your interest. This guide is intended to introduce the information literacy process that will help you conduct university level research. Begin with: First-Year Students: Library Basics
Pick a Research topic
- Read your syllabus and course assignment instructions carefully
- Pick a topic that interests you and meets the criteria of the assignment
- Need extra help? Click on Choosing an essay topic
Do an initial search on Wikipedia for background knowledge
- Wikipedia will also help you to broaden your search terms
- Watch the video, Using Wikepedia Wisely
Key References sources
- International Encyclopedia of Human Geography
- Oxford handbook of refugee and forced migration studies
- Oxford Reference Online
- Refugees and Forced Migration: a Canadian perspective A-Z guide (print only)
- Refugees Worldwide
- SAGE Knowledge Encyclopedias
To find journal articles, you have 3 options:
1. Use Omni, the library's main search box
- type in the keywords of your topic or use the Advanced Search option and search by Subject
- each search can return many results, so use the filters to refine your search results
- Need help? Try Omni Search Tips
2. Search a specialized database for History
3. Use a search engine
- Google Scholar - access via the library's web site - searches information on the web and provides links to full-text articles to which the CU Library subscribes, or to articles made freely available by academic publishers.
Information about Journal Articles:
- Peer Review in 3 minutes (YouTube video) Academic journals publish the world's most recent peer-reviewed research in all disciplines in the form of journal articles. View this short video on the peer review process for journal articles:
To find Books/ebooks:
- do a keyword search in the Omni search box
- filter the results by 'Books' under Resource Type; to find eBooks, select 'Available Online' under Availability
- view instructions for finding eBooks on Omni
- when using the Advanced Search option, filter by Subject (a controlled vocabulary of words and phrases), then select Books, as Material Type.
- After finding book(s) on your topic, use the Virtual Browse feature to discover other titles
- Need help? Try Omni Search Tips
Searching Techniques
- Most databases do not support natural language searching. You have to be precise in the words that you select.
- Follow these instructions when using Boolean operators, AND, OR, NOT
- Join different concepts together using AND to narrow your search
- ex: refugees AND "Middle East"
- Use OR to string symnonyms together, within brackets, to broaden your search
- ex: (elderly OR geriatric OR aged)
- Use NOT to exclude a word. For example: cloning NOT sheep
- Use truncation (* asterisk) when you want to allow for several spellings or variations of a word
- For example: soci* can stand for social, socialization, society, societies, sociology, sociological
- Tip: If you wish to replace exactly 1 letter, use ? question mark rather than * asterisk
- Example: wom?n, globali?ation
- Complex search strings are evaluated left to right, so make sure that you are grouping concepts together correctly. For example: Europ* AND (refuge* OR exile OR displace*) AND "Spanish Civil War"
Begin with: Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources for an overview and explanation of these sources.
Searching for primary sources on Omni:
Search your topic (or historical person of interest) on Omni to find primary sources (or reproductions) in our collection. Boolean operators (command words) must be in CAPS - AND, OR, NOT
Example: refugee AND diar* AND biography
Keyword searches that include the following terms will usually identify primary sources: correspondence, diary, diaries, letters, memoir, personal narrative, recollections, reminiscences, journal(s), sources, oral sources, photographic portrait(s).
Another major strategy to keep in mind is that all history books (secondary sources) found on Omni will likely cite primary sources and record them in their bibliographies and footnotes. This will also help you quickly identify primary source material.
Databases
- Canadiana
- Dissertations and Theses Global
- JSTOR
- Reader's Guide Retrospective 1890-1982
- Consult: List of databases - Archives and Primary Sources
Historical Newspaper Databases
Digital Archives on the web
Maps, Atlases and Web Sites
- Atlas of Migration
- Atlas of Migration in Europe: a critical geography of immigration policy
- People on the Move: an atlas of migration (print only)
- Migration Portal
- The Unrooted: a story map
- Earth Time: free map resource using data from 2000-2015 from various sources
- RefWorld has historical and more current maps
- The Refugee project uses data from the UNHCR
- UNHCR map portal
- Refuee History
- OECD
Reading Guides
- How to read effectively and critically (U of Melbourne)
- How to read a Scholarly Article (Western U Libraries)
Writing Guides
- Writing an annotated bibliography: Youtube video or web page
- Writing Services offers students help with learning the mechanics of academic writing
Referencing your sources is an important part of academic writing. Why?
- it lets you acknowledge the ideas or words of others if you use them in your work
- it enables readers to find the source information
- it demonstrates that you are using the scholarly record and that you can provide authority for statements you make in your term paper
- it helps you to avoid plagiarism
Citing Tools
- Chicago Citation Style (Notes and Bibliography) web page
- Chicago Style (Purdue Online Writing Lab) web page
- The Chicago manual of style online handbook
