College of Education: Library and Research Resources

Before focusing in on a topic too soon, go broad and explore the scholarly conversation around a topic area. You can use Google Scholar, Usearch the library catalog, and books to get a broader perspective on your topic. Links on this page will get you started. If you would like to explore more detailed information about the 5 strategies outlined in the left navigation menu, use this Open Canvas Course that contains additional links and tutorials.

Google Scholar is a great place to start your research. Scholar has the ease of Google but limits searching to more scholarly resources like books, scholarly articles and dissertations. It can be linked to the library databases so that you can discover resources in Google Scholar and then see if we have those resources at the U of U Marriott Library. You can also discover government reports, and articles from Europe, Asia and Australia. 
First, Link Google Scholar to our Marriott Library resources:

1. Go to Scholar and click on the Settings link (3 lines or a wheel depending on your browser) at the top left corner of the page.

2. Click on Library Links on the navigation menu and type University of Utah into the search box and search, then select the Get it at the UU option, and click save Button. These settings will stay on your computer until you clean out your cache or reformat your computer. Now you will see the Get at the UU link on the right side of the source if it is in in any of our databases

3. Add some search terms to search. Above I used a phrase in quotation marks - to find that exact phrase "developing teacher identity". I used the word AND in capital letters to connect my phrase to another word. Notice the * at the end of the work reflect*. That will find the work reflect, reflecting, reflection, etc.

4. After you search you will see a new left hand navigation menu appear where you can limit by year and sort by date or relevance.

5. You will see under the source listing, cited by #, a Cite link to create a citation, and related articles. These may also be possible articles to check out. Take note of journal names, keywords, author names, you can use those to limit by when searching later

6. If you click on the Get it @ UU link that appears to the right of the sources, it will take you directly into the library database to get the full text article. This is helpful if you are not sure what database to use. If there is a PDF link to the right of the source you can click on that and go directly to the PDF to save it to your computer.

Use Google Scholar as a preliminary scan to:

• Look for additional keywords in the titles that you can use to search
• See who has cited articles and books
• Link out to author Google Scholar profiles (if there name is underlined)
• Get clues about what library databases might be good places to start searching in the library resources
• Take note about what journals are publishing articles around your topic

Usearch (The Library Catalog)
Usearch is another broad tool you can use to get a sense of the scope of the topic you are researching. Use Usearch to find online and physical books as well as journals, magazines and newspapers. You can also find specific information on the main Marriott Library website such as Interlibrary Loan, how to schedule a group room and how to contact the Knowledge Commons. The Usearch catalog will identify the location of a book and indicate whether or not the book is checked out. For access to the full text of online books and articles in Usearch make sure you are authenticated (see Off Campus Access Information).

Use USearch to:

• Find books, both print and electronic, government documents, audio-visual materials, manuscripts, maps, software and electronic media.
• FInd articles from some of the Marriott Library's research databases.
• Find the titles of journals or magazines the library subscribes to, but not individual articles within each magazine or journal.
• Search by author, title, subject, keywords, date, or ISBN/ISSN.
• It is important to remember that for a more comprehensive article search with advanced searching capability, you should use the databases tab to find all articles (Strategy #2 - Digging Deeper). 
• After you add keywords and find some sources in Usearch, you can use the right side filter menu to look at just books.

In books, Chapter 1 or the introduction will give you a broad overview of the topic. You can also skim the references and copy the titles from the reference list and put them in Google Scholar to find those articles. If you find books in the reference list put the titles in Usearch and try to find those books.