HST 498-4: U.S. Gender and Sexuality History: Finding Secondary Sources

Keyword searching is an iterative process. You should not expect to find what you are looking for on your very first search. Searching is an iterative process that requires patience. Scan the results of the initial search and refine your search accordingly by adding/removing new terms and synonyms. Also, do not settle for the first few sources listed on the search results page. You should scan at least the first 10-20 results.

Cast a wider research net. Keyword searching is the most common strategy for finding secondary sources. However, you should not rely on keyword searches alone. There are number of other strategies that you can utilize to cast a wider research net. Incorporating the additional research strategies listed below may help you find sources that traditional keyword searching missed. Here are a few strategies:

• Mine the footnotes and bibliography of the secondary sources you already have (backward citation searching).
• Use the "cited by" feature on Google Scholar to find new secondary sources you may have missed (forward citation searching).
• Use multiple academic databases; DO NOT rely on just one (indexing and discoverability). 
• Use boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) when searching academic databases.
• When searching the library catalog, use the subject heading hyperlinks within each book (catalog) record to find other books with the same "tag."
• When retrieving books from the stacks, browse the books nearby to find additional titles (academic libraries are organized by subject).

Use Interlibrary Loan to request books, articles, microfilm, and more that the library does not own.

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