FYS 100 Race and Law in the United States (Skerrett): Finding Books, Articles, & More

In the beginning of your research, it's helpful to learn just enough about the topic to get a basic overview. If you were just getting started, where would you look for background information on the history of your case and the main issues? Where would you look to find out about events and themes that defined the time period? What names, terms and topics might you use in your search? 

•  Try searching OneSearch is the library catalog, there you can search almost everything in the library at once- books, media, news sources, scholarly journals, and more.

• Use Library databases smaller collections of scholarly articles, news sources, images, media and more, which may be organized thematically on different topics.

• Google Scholar - a resource for both scholarly and non-scholarly articles. If you are on campus, you will find links to scholarly articles in our databases.

Search Tips:

• Brainstorm a few key words or phrases about your topic to help get you started in addition to the name of the case and the people involved.
• Use some of the reference sources like encyclopedias or short articles that will give you background and overview information.
• Think about the types of resources you are looking for (books, chapters, images scholarly articles, news, etc.), use appropriate filters in Onesearch to find these specific types of materials
• If you can't find an article or book you need, check out our service called interlibrary loan - we can request materials from other libraries if we don't have them at UR.