Which Items Are Relevant to My Topic

Not all of your search results will be relevant to your specific research question. Evaluate your results to decide what will be most useful.

Looking at the resulting references in a database can help with this - they include information such as: the article title, journal title (or book title), publication date, subjects, and often an abstract (article summary).

• Check the date of publication
  
• Subjects: describe the article topic, can also be used to find other related sources
  
• Abstract: (see Description below) short summary of the source. In many databases click on the title of the article or book to read the abstract

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If you still aren't yet sure what you would like to focus on, you may need to go back to refine your Research Question.

Finally, when in doubt, use our Ask a Librarian service.