CED LibAnswers: Owens Library

Think of Research as a Dinner Party:

Let's say that, as a child, you were passionate about your tricycle, so you decided to major in Wheel Studies as a college student. You show up to a dinner party for scholars of Wheel Studies. In one corner is a scholar of the history of the wheel in Central American agriculture; another scholar studies on the impact of the wheel on the second industrial revolution in 19th century England; and another scholar studies the impact of bicycle lanes on city planning.

You listen to several conversations among scholars, looking for something that fits your research interest, and over time, you start identifying patterns: "This scholar on the industrial revolution disagrees with this scholar of Central American agriculture on the role of the wheel in emerging technology, and this scholar of bike history is drawing on similar theories of city planning as a scholar in a different part of the room." You may find that, based on the conversations you hear, your original interest in tricycles has changed, and your new interest is a continuation of the research already happening in the room.

The following FAQ is an attempt to distill the process of research as one that is iterative (engaging in trial and error), collaborative (citing previous research), and generative (inspiring new research). 

Follow the Breadcrumb Trail:

When you're starting your research, look through the bibliographies of relevant sources that you find for related books and articles. You can start your research through Multi-Search at libs.uga.edu, which searches ~100 of our ~800 databases at once. This provides you with free access to millions of journal articles and books in full-text.

You can also try the Google Scholar engine on the libs.uga.edu website, which grants you additional access as a UGA affiliate. Use the "Cited by" feature in Google Scholar, which allows you to see other publications that reference the article at hand. Here's a tutorial on how to do that.

Here are some other useful resources:

• CED Research Notebook: An electronic version of the free handout (available in print at Owens) providing an overview to research at the CED

• Kate L. Turabian's Student’s Guide to Writing College Papers - A great reintroduction to writing an academic research paper

Library Research Guides

• Introduction to Literature Reviews:  
  How to initiate and process an in-depth search of the scholarly literature

  • An overview of Boolean keyword searching

• Landscape Architecture LibGuide: Includes many databases relevant to your discipline, some of which don't appear in Google Scholar or Multi-Search

  • Find more interdisciplinary databases by subject, including Anthropology, History, GIS Data, Plant Biology, and Ecology

• Annotated Bibliographies LibGuide: Learn the basic components of an annotated bibliography that can help you organize your sources

Citation Management: 

As a scholar, you'll encounter hundreds of articles, books, and other resources that might come in handy down the line. To save your citations for later and generate bibliographies in a variety of styles, consult the following:

• Chicago Style - Short Tip Sheet, helpful for cross-checking your citations

• Full Chicago Manual of Style, available in full-text online

• RefWorks - Citation Manager, a powerful software and in-browser tool that saves your citations and creates bibliographies in any style

• Library Guide - Using RefWorks 

How-To Guides

• A full list of tutorials for doing research at the UGA Libraries

Research Consultation

If you would like to have an in-depth, one-on-one consultation with a research librarian, you may schedule an appointment through LibCal.