Social Justice Capstone: Equity and the Struggle for Justice

This library research guide is designed as a research starting point for Professor Perea's course Social Justice Capstone: Equity and the Struggle for Justice. The pages in the left menu roughly group various kinds of information you might find helpful.

First, three things to consider when doing research:

• Define your goals - this will help you decide where to look. What kinds of information do you need? Are you looking for summary statistics or raw/micro data to do your own analysis? What geographic region and level of geography do you need? What is the time period you are interested in? Defining these areas can help focus your topic so that the research and writing will fit into the time you have.
• If you need data, it’s helpful to think about who might have collected the data you're looking for such as governmental bodies, organizations, business/trade groups, or commercial entities and see what data they have available.
• Remember to read through the bibliographies of articles and get the articles that seem pertinent to your research. It can also be helpful to use Google Scholar to see if these papers have been cited in more recent research.
• Performing a literature search is a useful technique for identifying research methodologies in your discipline.

In addition to data sources, there are links to a variety of research guides that cover this topic in more detail, a brief introduction to HOLLIS, and some guides to using sources.

If you didn't find the help you needed on this guide, here are some additional options for help:

• The Get Research Help webpage offers various resources, including finding subject specialists, which is a good idea for degree-candidates working towards a thesis. 
• The Ask a Librarian webpage offers an online chat service, an email form if you are unsure about who to ask for subject-expertise help or specific questions, and a form to request a research appointment.
• If you have general questions about the libraries, see the Library Guide for Harvard Extension School.
• Also, feel free to email me, Mary Frances Angelini, Research Librarian for the Extension School angelini@fas.harvard.edu with any questions. If I don't have the answer, I will refer you to one of our many subject specialists.