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We are working to upgrade the research experience by making ongoing improvements to our Research Guides.
You may encounter changes in the look and feel of the Research Guides website along with structural changes to our existing guides. If you have any questions or concerns about this process please let us know.

Library "Do-It-Yourself" (DIY)

I do not know which items are relevant to my topic

Not all of your search results will be relevant to your specific research question. Evaluate your results to decide what will be most useful.

Looking at the resulting references in a database can help with this - they include information such as: the article title, journal title (or book title), publication date, subjects, and often an abstract (article summary).

  • Subjects: describe the article topic, can also be used to find other related sources
     
  • Abstract: short summary of the source. In many databases click on the title of the article or book to read the abstract

If you still aren't yet sure what you would like to focus on, you may need to go back to refine your Research Question.

Look at an item's title, date, and subjects to determine its relevance to a topic.