This document provides step-by-step instructions for conducting library research for a political science course at UCSD. It outlines choosing a topic and keywords, constructing a search strategy using keywords and databases, evaluating different resource types like books, articles, and datasets, running searches and getting citations. The main steps are developing a research question, searching specialized databases and the catalog, evaluating sources and obtaining full texts or requesting items from other libraries.

1. Library Research Step by Step
For Political Science 120P

2. Before you start searching
• The licenses for most of our research tools
require that users are on UCSD IP addresses
– Are you on the wireless network at UCSD?
• Make sure you’re using the UCSD-PROTECTED network.
– Are you off-campus?
• Make sure you’re using the VPN or Proxy

3. Choose your topic and keywords.
• Develop your research question, hypothesis, or
thesis statement
– I heard recently that 20 years after the Rwandan
genocide, the country is now a “poster child” for
health equity, with significant drops in new HIV
infections.
• Break that statement into key concepts,
– Rwanda, health care, AIDS, HIV, success
• Think of other ways to phrase those concepts.
Use synonyms. Consider more specific words (to
narrow your focus) or more general terms (to
expand your search), e.g.
– Rwanda, Great Lakes, Darfur, Sub-Saharan Africa…
– Health care, healthcare, health, medicine,
doctors…
– HIV, AIDS, human immunodeficiency virus,
acquired immunodeficiency syndrome…
– Success, progress, gains, milestones; specific
metrics…

4. Construct a basic search strategy.
• In most databases, you can combine terms
with and (both terms must appear in the
hit)and or (one term must appear in the hit—
for synonyms or evenly weighted terms)
– Rwanda and health; AIDS or HIV
• In many databases, you can use a symbol such
as * or ! to take the place of letters to get hits
with multiple endings of a word
– poli*
• Example search:
Rwanda and (health or AIDS or HIV) and
poli*

5. Choose the kinds of resources you
want to find and the best tools to find
them.
• Each tool helps you find a
specific, limited kind and
amount of information.
• Knowing which tools might
help you find what you're
looking for will save you a lot
of time.

6. Books
Books typically cover a single topic in depth.
Look in an online library catalog like
(UC San Diego’s library catalog)
• Tip: Many of the Library’s books are now
ebooks. Use to find the link.
• Tip: Not enough at UC San Diego, or the
book you want checked out?
– Try to request books from other
San Diego libraries
– Try to request books from other
University of California libraries

7. Scholarly Articles
Scholarly articles cover more narrow topics than books.
Because they are shorter, they are often published more
quickly, too, making them more current. The Library has
literally hundreds of databases for finding articles.
Look in a discipline specific
databases such as Worldwide
Political Science Abstracts to
find the core publications in
your field.
Or look in multidisciplinary
databases for a little bit of
everything.

8. Primary Sources
Primary sources are materials that
document the event when it
happened—or as close to when it
happened as possible.
Items in the Library are cataloged in
and other resources are
available in specialized databases.
Examples include:
• News: traditional and social media
• Government publications and
official documents
• First person accounts: diaries,
letters, oral histories, blogs…

9. Statistics & Datasets
Generally available in specialized databases or
directly from the researchers as
• Aggregate/statistics (numbers already
analyzed)
• Microdata (lowest level of collection)

10. Run searches using the tools you
choose.
Experiment with keywords and
combinations of keywords, e.g. I
might try
• Rwanda and health care and
(success or progress or gains
or milestones)
• Rwanda and health
• Rwanda and (hiv or aids)
• Rwanda and (health or hiv or
aids) and policy

11. Try different tools.
• Check the help screens or guides to each
database for specifics on combining your
terms and whether your results are ranked by
date or relevance.
• When you find good hits, look at the subject
headings/descriptors. Try running new
searches using those terms.

12. Get the citation information. You
need this for your bibliography.
You list the works you cite so that readers
interested in your research can find and read the
resources you used to draw your conclusions.
• Email records to yourself as a backup.
• Some databases can export the citation in a
specific format (e.g. APA, Chicago, MLA)
• Use RefWorks (free to UCSD students) to
manage, store, and format your citations.

13. Get the actual item.
• If the full text isn’t available in your search
results. Look for the button.
• Link to full text if available.
• No full text?
– Try for the print
• No UCSD access at all?
– You can usually request the item from another
library using the link.
– For books, try or

14. Evaluate the source
• Does it answer the
question?
• What are the
author’s credentials?
– And what sources do
they cite?
• Is the source current
enough for the kind
of research you're
doing?