In general, we recommend searching CCSF Library resources first, because they contain material that is not freely available on the open web. However, there is lots material on the open web that is not in the library! Therefore, combining these efforts (searching library resources, and then searching the open web) can be effective.
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Rather than putting a full sentence into an online search box, it can be more productive to focus your topic down into a few search words. To combine them, follow these search tips:
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Email reference is available Monday through Friday during the Fall and Spring semesters. We try to respond within two days.
Chat with the library 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to meet with a librarian for in-depth help with your research.
Take your topic and think how you will turn it into search terms. If your research question is "What is the historical context of Florida in the time period represented in Their Eyes Were Watching God?" the most essential elements to find are history, Florida, and the book title. It can help to brainstorm alternatives to the words IN your research question, because different words will surface different results in your search.
Keyword |
historical context | Florida | "Their Eyes Were Watching God" |
---|---|---|---|
Synonyms |
early 1900s 1920s and culture |
Eatonville Jacksonville Everglades Okeechobee
|
"Zora Neale Hurston" |
Note: the quotation marks around some search terms help tell the search engine that you want results with the words stuck together exactly as you have them.
Combining three of my search concepts, a sample Google search is shown below.
Google Scholar attempts to locate scholarly material. It will show your more results than you actually have paid access to. Items that you can access immediately and for free have a PDF link in the far right area of the page. Like so:
Sample Google Scholar search.
Special collections & archives are contain material that is managed and sometimes digitized by universities and organizations to ensure they are available for research purposes. For example, a writer may donate their work (their "papers") to an institution after their death, and the institutions then catalog the items in the donation so others can find them. These donations can contain letters to or from the writer in question, handwritten or typed manuscripts created during their process of writing their work, and more. Depending on the currency of your research topic, there may be special collections that can assist you in your project. This is especially useful when your topic can be explored in a historical context.
For example, Zora Neale Hurston is a historical figure in the literary canon. Since her writing occurred before the 1960s, it is likely we might be able to find special collections that contain the historical objects of her work. Below are some links to special collections and archives containing this work.
Many of these kinds of resources can be surfaced with a simple Google search like:
special collections and [insert name of writer or written work]
In addition, many of these items live in educational institutions. You may improve your Google search by entering these search words:
special collections AND [insert name or writer or written work] AND site:.edu
Here are some examples of special collections that share the unparalleled work of Ms. Hurston: