When searching for translations of titles, search every possible version of the title. The Wikipedia article about the text is a good way to find some possible versions of the title. For example, the original title of a poem is "Yama no ugoku hi kitaru" but there are two translations of the title "Mountain Moving Day" and "The Day the Mountains Move." Searching for all three to find all possible resources.
When in doubt, ask a librarian!
Another way of thinking of the honeycomb model is as a concept map. If you can't find things about your text exactly, try to find sources that can be applied to the text. What are the possible voices surrounding your topic? What formats may the be in? Where could you find them?
This guide will walk you through the research process with recommended course-specific resources. A list of some recommended resources included in this guide is below.
Don't forget to check out our other Research Guides for any interdisciplinary research.
Screen reader user? Follow these links to get instructions on using the Library Search interface to find books and journal articles.
MLA International Bibliography offers a detailed bibliography of journal articles, books and dissertations. Produced by the Modern Language Association (MLA), the electronic version of the bibliography dates back to 1843 and contains over 1.7 million citations from more than 4,400 journals & series, and 1,000 book publishers.
Gale Literary Sources brings together Literature Resource Center, Literature Criticism, Contemporary Authors, Dictionary of Literary Biography, LitFinder, and Something About the Author into a single cross searchable platform.
This collection includes all 2,800+ academic journals on JSTOR, covering more than 60 disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Also included are millions of primary sources from the 19th Century British Pamphlets, World Heritage Sites: Africa, Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa, and the Global Plants collections.
The JSTOR platform does not provide access to the most recent 3-5 years of a journal’s content. Current issues of journals hosted on the JSTOR platform are available through separate subscriptions on other platforms. Please check LibrarySearch for access to embargoed content.
The most commonly used operators are: AND, OR, and NOT. When used in all caps, search engines (Library Search, databases, and Google) recognize them as a specific function. These are best described by using Venn diagrams.
Click the tabs at the top of this box to learn more about each operator.
If you are researching social media but receive too many results about social media users or the social media site itself when you only want information on social media about the experience of influencers, you could use AND to make sure you only receive results with both terms in the item record.
If you are researching something with a name that varies depending on the context, you can use OR to make sure the system is searching all possible versions of that term. For example, some information on LGBTQ+ topics uses the term "LGBTQ" while "homosexual" is more commonly used in medical texts. If you want both, use OR to combine your terms.
If you are searching with a term that is part of a larger term not relevant to your research or that term is also used in a different field, you may need to use NOT to remove results. For example, if you are searching for the portrayal of witches in the media and use the term "witch," you may receive results about The Witcher, a book, video game, and Netflix series. To remove these results, use NOT.
To use NOT in Google searches, use - (minus sign).
Though some Advanced Search features of search engines allow you to have multiple search boxes with drop-down menus for Boolean Operators, you can use multiple operators in single line searches.
( ) Just like in math, parentheses are their own groupings. This part of the search is done before it is combined with any other part of the search.
" " Quotation marks make sure that two or more words are in that exact order or are found with that exact spelling.
* An asterisk functions as truncation. It can be used to find words with multiple endings. For example, teach* will search for teach, teacher, teachers, teaches, and teaching.
? A question mark functions as a wildcard. It can be used to find words where only one letter is changed. For example, wom?n will search for women, woman, womyn, and womxn.
Both of the searches above will function the same even though they are written differently.
Last, First, and First Last. "Title of Article." Title of Journal, vol. #, no. #, Year, pp. #-#. DOI.
Gottvall, Maria, et al. "Post‐migration Psychosocial Experiences and Challenges Amongst LGBTQ+ Forced Migrants: A Meta‐synthesis of Qualitative Reports." Journal of Advanced Nursing, vol. 79, no.1, 2023, pp. 358–71. https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.15480
Information comes in many different forms. What are some categories or types of voices where you can find information?
In academic research, we tend to only emphasize academic voices while there are many other voices in different formats that can be used in a scholarly context.
Here is an example of a Research Honeycomb for LGBTQIA2S+ topics.