These library databases contain reliable content and are arranged by topics. They are useful for locating issues that are of concern to the public or the government, or may be of interest as a research topic.

Video - Getting Inspired: Picking a Topic

Breaking Down Your Topic Into Keywords

Once you have chosen your topic, you'll need to break it down into keywords in order to search for sources in a library database. To do this, you'll want to bring out the main points from your research topic. The video below from the University of Maryland Global Campus Library shows this process.

Using Your Keywords to Conduct a Search

Once you have your keywords (including synonyms and related words), it's time to start searching! If you have a keyword that is two words, such as affordable housing, you'll want to put quotation marks around the keyword, so that the full keyword appears in your search results.

Example: You would want to type "affordable housing" in the search box.

If you would like two keywords to appear together in your search results, you would use "AND" in your search.

Example: Your search box would have: "affordable housing" AND Michigan

The video below gives a quick review of breaking a research question down into keywords and shows how to use those keywords to search in a database.

Use Summon to locate books, articles, and more available through the Wayne State University Library System. This will likely be the most helpful place to search for sources for your course assignments. The link to Summon is available to the far right of the library home page.

While doing research, you're going to come across a lot of sources. It is important to keep track of the sources that you would like to explore further.

Here are a few ideas of how you can keep track of sources for a research assignment:

• If you are using a personal computer, you can create a folder on your desktop, title it with your course number and assignment name, download any articles you find that may be useful, and move them to that folder.
  • If you don't have a personal computer, you can do something similar by creating a folder for the class assignment in Google Drive (if you have a Google account), uploading the articles, and adding them to the assignment folder.
• If your Summon search results have some articles you would like to revisit, you can email the source to yourself from the results page, create a folder in your email account for the assignment, and move the email with the source to the assignment folder.
• You can create a Word document (or a Google Doc) with the title of your assignment, copy the permalinks of the articles that you would like to use, and paste the permalinks into the Word document.

Everyone works differently. Choose a plan of keeping track of your sources that works for you!

Beyond searching in Summon, you can also choose a subject-specific database to search for sources within a specific discipline. You can click on "Article Databases" toward the top of the page or click on the link below.

If you're looking for popular sources such as a news article, the resources below will be helpful.

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