Before you get started on your research, take some time to familiarize yourself with the assets offered through the RIT Libraries and some best practices for searching. Browse the tabs to the left to explore resources offered through the library.
Summon is the libraries search engine and searches all holdings of the RIT Libraries as well as searching through databases sponsored through the libraries. It is a good starting point to see what is available in your area of research. It is recommended to use the Advanced Search features to receive the most relevant results.
The following resources are a good place to get started. As you get ideas for further research and to see what is available on your topic you can gather prominent search terms and start to limit your searching to the most relevant information. From here move on to other resources listed through the topic tabs related to your specific topic.
1. Keywords, not sentences. These may need to be “tweaked” many times. Look in the titles and abstracts of articles for more specific/accurate terminology.
2. USE YOUR FILTERS (when changing your search, you might have to reset these).
3. SUMMON searches everything, choose a database by name/topic or a specific journal if known or more appropriate. (you could start with a haystack smaller than Summon.)
4. “Quotation marks” turn a group of words into a single entity for the search software.
5. An asterisk (*) is a "wild card" command you can use at the end of a root word…meaning, it takes the place of a myriad possible word endings and looks for them all. For example: exhibit* looks for exhibits, exhibition, exhibited, etc.
6. Use “advanced search” for multiple search terms. This screen option may make it easier to implement the boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) and/or to add, change, or take-away key words as you tweak your search terms.
7. CTRL “f” allows you to skim the text on your screen.
8. An article's references are like bread crumbs to other helpful articles. Look them over! Cross-reference titles that look promising!
Remember: you're using these tools to help make the "haystack" smaller,
so you can find those "needles" of information that you need
Use of RIT resources is reserved for current RIT students, faculty
and staff for academic and teaching purposes only.
Please contact your librarian with any questions.
