Some Ways to Begin
1. Build on what 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, that has cited your item in its bibliography and footnotes. Following citation trails is a common scholarly practice.
Example:
- Frederick Karl, Fuzikura Tatsuro, and Deborah B Gewertz. 2013. The Noodle Narratives : The Global Rise of an Industrial Food into the Twenty-First Century. Berkeley: University of California Press
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:
- Wong, Janelle S, and Karthick Ramakrishnan. 2023. “Asian Americans and the Politics of the Twenty-First Century.” Annual Review of Political Science 26 (1): 305–23.
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.
Example search:
3. Check to see if a good subject bibliography can 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.)
Subject Databases: Beyond HOLLIS, JSTOR, and Scholar
Top Picks
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: The most comprehensive western-language resource for research on Asia, contains nearly 900,000 records on all subjects (especially in the humanities and the social sciences) pertaining to East, Southeast, and South Asia published worldwide from 1971 to the present.
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.
ADDITIONAL (Matched to STUDENT INTERESTs)
Education 3-in-1 Database Search
Enables you to search across three important databases, rich in information and scholarship around education topics of all kinds: Education Source, ERIC (contents of the U.S. Department of Education's resource databank), and Academic Search Premier.
Good coverage of scholarly and trade publication on business worldwide; recommended for topics with an economic emphasis (including banking)
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
Political science and international relations with coverage of complementary fields; journal literature includes titles from over 50 countries.
Authoritative historical and current perspectives on the evolution of gender roles as they affect both men and women. Coverage is global.
Produced under the auspices of the American Psychological Association, this database is the largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health. Includes ample scholarship on related fields, too: education and gender studies among them.
Getting Around Paywalls On the Web
Three ways to solve the access problem:
- Tweak your 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 copy and paste the title into HOLLIS to double-check. If we don't have it, you'll be prompted to request that we get it for you.
Research Methods: Qual, Quant, Mixed
Sage Research Methods
The ultimate methods library, it has more than 1000 books, reference works, journal articles, case studies, and instructional videos by world-leading academics from across the social sciences. It also boasts the largest collection of qualitative methods books available online from any scholarly publisher.
Users can browse content by topic, discipline, or format type (reference works, book chapters, definitions, etc.). SRM offers several research tools as well: a methods map; user- created readng lists; a project planner' and advice on choosing statistical tests.
