Latino Research Institute

How many databases would you guess we subscribe to here at UT Austin? The answer is over 800. You do not have to search them all, of course, but you should not stop at just one. We wouldn't have 800 of them if one was comprehensive. Before you ask, no, Google Scholar is not comprehensive.

Your goal in this endeavor should be to seek out the diversity of perspectives surrounding your topic.

Database searching is an iterative process. This means that you will repeat it several times because as you search you are learning about your topic, including keywords and concepts. Or you may repeat your search because you want to try it in a different database or you might have heard about a particular author in your field. In general, you might have three phases of searching:

1. Exploratory. Here's where you test concepts and keywords and find out what sorts of information might be available. In this phase, you will search inter-disciplinary databases such as Google Scholar, Web of Science, EBSCO or ProQuest or Academic Search Complete.
2. Subject-oriented. This is where you will use subject specific databases (from the Library Guides), and you'll search includes key authors and publications.
3. Citation searching. This is where you'll examine the references from articles you like to make sure you've found the seminal (or key) pieces of research. You'll also look at the articles that have cited these articles you like to see what is currently happening in your topic, and how others have built upon this research.