OneSearch
Ask Us! We're Here to Help
Chat with a librarian
Our live chat is active from 10am-4pm Monday-Friday during semesters, otherwise you can leave an offline message!
View common questions about the library, including information about borrowing items, accessing online resources, using library space, and more!
Stay up-to-date with the latest library news, events, and research tips!
Welcome
This guide will help you get started in your research.
Click the tabs for more information and please contact us for assistance!
Multidisciplinary Databases
Search or browse all databases. Recommended databases are listed below.
Specialized Databases
- Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window Index to international journal articles, books, book chapters, dissertations, conference papers, and working papers of sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences, includes the Social Services Abstracts database. Coverage is 1952-present.
This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
- ICPSR: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research This link opens in a new window Social science data repository, management, and curation consortium. The majority of datasets may be downloaded for analysis and data can be uploaded for preservation archiving and sharing. The ICPSR Bibliography of Data-related Literature is an index dating back to 1962, containing over 80,000 citations of works using data from the archive, including journal articles, books, book chapters, government and agency reports, working papers, dissertations, conference papers, and more.
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- Criminal Justice Abstracts This link opens in a new window Index to over 600 scholarly journals, magazines, reports, and conference proceedings covering all areas of criminal justice, including forensic sciences, corrections, policing, criminal law and investigation.
- This link opens in a new window
Keywords
Brainstorming keywords for your topic will help you refine your topic, find the most information about your topic and save you time by helping you search databases in a more efficient and systematic way.
Why? Different authors will refer to the same concept in different ways. Having a comprehensive list of keywords to search will help you find more information about your topic!
1. Pick out the main ideas in your research question. For example, the main ideas in this research question are in bold: “What effect does illegal immigration have on the U.S. economy?"
2. Take each of your main ideas and brainstorm as many synonyms, related words, acronyms, initialisms, and spelling variants as you can. For example, for U.S.:
- United States
- United States of America
- America
- USA
- U.S.A.
3. Do this for each of your main ideas. Searching all the variants you can come up with will give you a broader selection of relevant information. It might help to make a chart to keep track of which combinations you have searched for.
4. Know that there is no such thing as a perfect search. Searching is a process, so having a list of potential keywords will help you begin your research. You’ll find that different combinations of keywords will bring up different results in different databases. You can still learn something from every search you perform, so know that this list of keywords can continue to grow throughout your research process.
-
You can also use what you learn from searching to redefine your research topic or question.
5. Several other specific search techniques can help you use your brainstormed keywords. Take a look at:
Developing a Research Question
- Select a topic that interests you and do some pre-research. If you need ideas:
- Look at course readings and class notes.
- Find information using Google, Wikipedia, CQ Researcher, or Credo Reference.
- Consider the scope of your topic. If it is too narrow, you might have trouble finding enough information. If it is too broad, you can be overwhelmed with information.
- Think about your assignment prompt while determining the scope of your topic. It is important to consider the size of the assignment and the length of time you have to complete it in thinking about scope.
- Find more on narrowing your topic.
- Turn your focused topic into a research question. Know that your research question may change slightly depending on what sorts of resources you find. While you should have a topic or question in mind, allow the sources you find, along with your interests, to help shape and refine your topic further.
Questions to guide the development of your research question:
- Is it focused enough to be covered in my paper or project?
- Is there enough literature available on this topic?
- What is the question that my research is answering?
- Am I genuinely interested in this topic?
- Is my topic going to be new and interesting to my audience?
- How do you determine if a resource has quality, useful information?
Request Materials
- Request a PurchasePurchase requests are evaluated based on the Libraries' collection development policy and the availability of funds. Materials that support the research, teaching, and learning needs of students, faculty and staff at the University of Montana will be given first priority. We will contact you individually if your purchase request is denied.
- Interlibrary Loan (ILL)If we don't have a book, article or item, we can borrow it from another library!