Strategies to Anchor and Orient Your Work
Research Move 1: Build on a Lead You Have Already: The 'Item in Hand' Approach
Key Resource: Google Scholar
Why: You already know the value of examining footnotes and bibliographies for related scholarship or for identifying primary source material. And you know that whenever you find material by these means, a quick HOLLIS search by book or article title will identify your access options.
Sometimes, though, you want to look beyond the item in hand -- not look at its antecedents but at its descendants -- the scholarship produced later and after, that has cited your item in its bibliography and footnotes. Following citation trails (Cited By) is a long-standing scholarly practice.
RESEARCH MOVE 2: Look for a more or less recent research overview on your topic or its broader dimensions.
Key Resource: Annual Reviews
Why: Literature reviews help you easily understand—and contextualize—the principal contributions that have been made in your field. They not only track trends over time in the scholarly discussions of a topic, but also synthesize and connect related work. They cite the trailblazers and sometimes the outliers, and they even root out errors of fact or concept. Typically, they include a final section that identifies remaining questions or future directions research might take.
Example Review:
- Beliso-De Jesús, Aisha M, Jemima Pierre, and Junaid Rana. 2023. “White Supremacy and the Making of Anthropology.” Annual Review of Anthropology 52 (1): 417–35
Pro Tip:
- Watch your nomenclature. In the discipline of history, the common term for this research format is historiography.
Other Strategies for locating literature reviews:
- In subject databases, like those described below, you'll often be able to limit by literature review or review essay or historiography. You may need look for these these filters under the document type or methodology category.
- In book-length studies, the introduction (by author[s] or editor[s]) often acts as miniaturized lit review. In the process of announcing its purpose and origins, introductions identify the intellectual forbears who laid the groundwork.
- In dissertations, lit reviews commonly appear as an introductory or preliminary chapter. Try ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global. Dissertations aren't peer-reviewed in the same way that published articles and academic books are, but they can also be a source for topics that are emerging, trending, or very current.
Research Move 3: Check for a subject bibliography as a way to direct your reading.
Key Resource: Oxford Bibliographies Online
Why: Selective rather than exhaustive and combining a bit of description with a little bit of evaluation, OBO entries help you identify some of the most important and influential scholarship on a broad social, political, cultural or interdisciplinary disciplinary topic.
Your very focused research question may not have a bibliography, but its larger dimensions - or its theoretical implications or something intellectually "adjacent" to it are likely to have some representation.
(Often, though, the issue in information-seeking isn't scarcity of material but overabundance. OBO entries can help you solve the dilemma of knowing who to read first, what to read for, or simply which voices in the conversation you should give some fuller attention to.)
Example Entries:
- Fascism [OBO Sociology module; see also its section on "Far Right"]
- Founding Myths of the Americas [OBO Atlantic History Module]
- Slurs, Pejoratives, and Hate Speech [OBO Philosophy module]
- Nationalism [OBO Sociology module; CTRL+F for myth]
Research Move 4: Deploy Language Strategically to Surface Backgrounds, Contexts, and Agenda-Setting Materials
Key Resource: HOLLIS
Examples:
- handbook or companion: this is a key academic format, regardless of discipline and denotes a published book that republishes ground-breaking work, or commissions scholarly essays that summarize standard approaches and important or consensus views. Other terms to try: reader or anthology.
- debate or controversy (or controvers* to pick up variants), or contested or disputed often help you surface works that identify the "stakes" of a particular argument, action, phenomenon, etc. So will words like proponents, advocates or their opposites: opponents or critics. Political scientists favor the term puzzle to express these ideas.
- theory or theoretical or philosophy or philosophical might help you find works in larger contexts or examined via a "lens" of some kind. You can truncate these terms, too, by the way: theor*, philosoph*
- history is a way to get at full-length studies not just of countries or events, but also of ideas and concepts and broad subjects.
- historiograph* can surface materials that address and synthesize approaches historians have used over time.
- narrative* or case study or interview* or even the phrase "lived experiences" angles topics toward approach as do the more general terms, qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods.
- To identify anthropologically-focused topics, ethnography (or ethnograph*) is an option to try.
Subject Databases: Exploring Beyond HOLLIS, JSTOR, and Scholar
TOP PICKS
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts (ProQuest)
Why: Covers all aspects of political science, international relations, political history, theory, and philosophy, drawing its content from scholarship published around the world.
Sociological Abstracts (ProQuest)
Why: Covers the international literature in sociology, social work, and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. An essential resource for Social Studies concentrators.
Why: Considers itself the largest existing compilation of philosophy research, built and maintained by philosophy scholars. Political theory and philosophy are well-represented.
America History and Life and/or Historical Abstracts
Why: These complimentary databases are the gold standards for uncovering scholarship on the U.S. and Canada, prehistory to present (AHL) and the world, 1450-present (HA).
Why: Searches across all of the publications that are produced by the American Anthropological Society.
Why: AP combines the contents of two essential databases: Anthropological Index (produced by the Royal Anthropological Institute, UK) and Anthropological Literature (originally produced at Harvard's Tozzer Library and now maintained by the Peabody Museum here). It is considered the resource that most comprehensively convers anthropology, archaeology, subdisciplines, and related interdisciplinary research.
Getting Around Paywalls on the Web
THREE WAYS TO SOLVE AN ACCESS ISSUE
- Google Scholar Settings: One simple change can turn Scholar into what's effectively a Harvard database -- with links to the full-text of articles that the library can provide. Here's what to do: Look to the left of the GS screen and click on the "hamburger" (
); then click on 
. Look for "Library Links." Then type Harvard University into the search box and save your choice. As long as you allow cookies, the settings will keep
- Set up a Check Harvard Library Bookmark. It works like a browser extension; click on it when you want to check Harvard's access and it will "unlock" content we provide.
Directions are available here: https://library.harvard.edu/services-tools/check-harvard-library-bookmark.
- And when all else fails, remember that you can cut and paste the title and put it into HOLLIS to double-check. If we don't have it, you'll be prompted to request that we get it for you.
