Books, articles and resources beyond Vassar: 

• Interlibrary Loan (ILL)
  • Books, articles, film, dissertations and other resources not available at Vassar. ILLiad is our ILL platform.
• WorldCat
  • The "world's catalog"; a great resource for locating books.
• Purchase Request Form
  • Please complete for books/ebooks, films and more, especially if you plan to heavily rely on the item and would like to borrow the resource for a longer period of time.
• NY Library catalogs
  • Every college student in NY, regardless of your home state, can apply for a New York Public Library (NYPL) card. This allows you to access NYPL online resources and request to view items in person.
• SHARES
  • Consortium of libraries to provide expedited ILL, special collections access, and easy in-person use of member collections. 
• Center for Research Libraries (CRL)
  • A large research collection that includes an international newspaper archive.
• HathiTrust
  • A great and free online repository for older materials, especially those within the public domain. 
• Internet Archive
  • A surprisingly good source for ebooks from the 1950's-early 2000's, radio shows/podcasts and other miscellaneous resources. Access may require free account creation. 
• ArchiveGrid
  • Directory of archival collections from libraries, museums, historical societies and other institutions that hold cultural heritage material. The bulk of the material is from the United States, but material from Canada, Australia, parts of Europe, and elsewhere is also included.
• Other institutional repositories (may be retrieved in Google Scholar)
  • Like Vassar's Digital Library, you may find resources housed in college and university institutional repositories that contain the scholarly output/publications of that community. 

When you're embarking on a significant research and writing project, it can be challenging to keep track of sources and search strategies -- but doing so will save you time and headaches! Here are some recommendations:

• Document your research process. This can be as structured or as informal as you'd like; think of it as a map you're making for yourself. 
• Create and use accounts in Library Search and databases (Scopus and WoS both offer personal accounts). This will allow you to save items that you find, as well as search strings (keywords, subject terms, etc.). 
• Set up table of contents alerts in your favorite journals to keep up with what's being published related to your topic. 
• Consider using a citation management tool like Zotero to store and organize your citations; this will also help you generate footnotes/endnotes and references while you're writing. 

Zotero Citation Manager

Zotero is a free easy-to-use citation management tool to help you collect, store, organize, cite, and share your research sources. Zotero can format in-text citations and generate references lists using your preferred citation style. 

More information about citing and style guides on the Citing & Managing Sources. 

Trello

Trello is a free project management software. You can use it for setting deadlines, keeping track of tasks and more. See Organizing the research process using Trello to get started. There are free and paid versions. 

Evernote

An platform for notes and electronic notebooks. Free and paid versions, both cloud-based and desktop versions. 

1. Don't try to keep it all in your head.
   1. Diagram your tentative topic/ research question.
   2. Document your research process; consider using a synthesis grid or a research log/journal to plan out your current tasks and next steps.
2. Annotate your reference documents. Work this into your search process and note why the source is relevant and how you might use it, as you save them. If using Zotero, you can use its built-in annotation tools. Write as you go. 
3. When saving sources, look for permalinks or DOIs.
4. Create accounts in the database platforms you are using regularly to save searches and results.
5. Use a citation manager. Zotero is a great free option. 

Literature Synthesis Grids

Synthesis grids are organizational tools for recording the main concepts of your sources and can help with connecting your sources to one another.

• Synthesis Grid Templates & Search Log: This template provides four different organizational frameworks for keeping track of your sources. Select the grid that most closely meets your needs; add or delete columns as you wish. Download or create your own copy to begin using.

Searching, Reading & Writing with BEAM

As you search and review sources, consider the sources potential use beyond relevancy: Background, Evidence, Argument, Methods. BEAM framework is from Bizup- for more see The Craft of Research. 

Managing Moments of Uncertainty & Anxiety as a Writer

Booth, Wayne C., et al. The Craft of Research, Fifth Edition, University of Chicago Press, 2024.

As you get deeper into your project, you may experience a moment when everything seems to run together into a hopeless muddle. That usually happens when you accumulate notes faster than you can sort them. Such moments can be stressful, but they can also be a sign that you are on the verge of a new insight or discovery. You can minimize anxiety by taking every opportunity to organize and summarize what you have gathered by writing as you go and by returning to the central questions: What question am I asking? What problem am I posing? Keep rehearsing that formula, I am working on X to learn more about Y, so that my audience can better understand Z. Writing regularly about these questions does more than help you stay focused; it also helps you think (p. 94).

▪  Give yourself adequate time. When planning any project, most people underestimate how long it will take. The same is true for writing. So make your best estimate, then double it.

▪  Divide large and abstract tasks into smaller and more concrete ones. If the prospect of “writing a paper” feels daunting, break it down to more manageable tasks: make a storyboard, draft a provisional introduction, summarize and respond to a source, edit your sentences for clarity, and so on.

▪  Focus on your writing’s strengths, not its weaknesses. 

▪  Don’t go it alone. Whenever you can, share your writing with others. You will benefit from their responses, and just talking it through will stimulate your thinking.

▪  Adopt reasonable standards. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you feel that you must make every sentence or paragraph perfect before you move to the next one, you risk paralysis. It helps if you write informally along the way. In any event, know that every researcher compromises on perfection to get the job done.

▪  Recognize when you are stuck, and then do something different. You can take a break (of twenty minutes, or a day or two, or months or years, depending on your project and the time you have) to let your unconscious mind work on the problem. 

▪  Accept that you are not your paper. 

▪  Finally, visit a writing center if one is available to you (p.188-191.)