 So our topic for our workshop today for UT Libraries is there's nothing out there. What to do when you get a research dead end, reframing keywords, and other strategies to reinvigorate your search. So here's just another announcement again. This will be recorded. You can check our website to see this recording later. Also, if you have any questions, just put those in the chat. That's the easiest way to get in touch with us during this. So I will start by introducing myself and then hand it over to Alex. I'm Allison Shepherd. I use she her pronouns and I'm an online learning librarian at UT Libraries. And my name is Alex Boris. I use she her pronouns and I am a commons librarian at Hodges. So pretty much we're going to go over some strategies about when you get stuck with research. And then we'll have time for questions at the end. So if it pops in your head and you need to chat it, feel free. If not, we'll get it at the end. Let's see. And this is what you're going to learn at the end of the session. Alright, so I was going to start with keywords because I feel like those are super important. So sometimes you get your keywords and you're like these two keywords are perfect and you start searching. And that doesn't work. So a lot of times what I like to do before I even start searching is kind of think of like synonyms for keywords that you're using or different ways to say different things. One way I do that is I kind of do a little keyword diagram, which you can kind of see I put in there and just kind of put a bunch of synonyms in. But I pretty much just sit and brainstorm for a good 10 minutes of just like get it out all the words I can think of, then, because it takes 10 minutes. I sometimes I know this is last minutes, but I go to Google and I see kind of what other people are using. Because sometimes the words that you think of are not exactly the words that are going to pop up in the system. And so it's always good to kind of see what what other people are using terms or people like especially if you're researching a person. Make sure that you know all of their different aliases. I think a good example is Mark Twain and his actual name which I'm gonna be honest to don't remember it right now, but knowing both of those if you're researching Mark Twain is a good thing. So kind of keep the heads up on that. But that's how Google helps me. Thank you Amber Samuel Clemens. That sounds right. I think it's Clemens. So we'll go ahead to the next slide. Yeah, so the next step is choosing your database. So real quick I put the most popular databases on here. Some of them are self explanatory like business source complete. It's about business. You'll find really good sources about business in there. Psych info focuses a lot on psychology. So just kind of know know what subjects the databases specialize in. And then there are databases like academic search complete, which has a very large array of different subjects. So that's always in my opinion a good place to start of getting kind of a basis of something. But know what subject you're looking under. Also something that might help is research guides. There are research guides for just about every subject out there you could possibly think of. So there is a way to find that on the website. It's just on the main web page. If you scroll down just a little bit, you'll see something that says research guides. You can also find it through the articles and databases page. It's really great resource, whatever I get stuck, I go to that can go to those research guides and usually find at least one database I haven't tried yet. And a lot of times that's the database you need. Definitely don't don't worry about only sticking with one database. I recommend going to a bunch of different ones. And if you can't find something switch databases. So say you're looking at academic search complete. You're not pulling anything up. Your subject is kind of sciencey try web of science. Same search terms. Look it up. See what you can find every database has something a little bit different to offer. So don't be afraid to explore those and yeah, the next last database keywords. So some databases are super great in the sense that if you start typing something in it starts to give you options. So a really good example of that is where I typed in academic and you see all those tags. My favorite one that pulled up and I'm glad it did when I typed it was academic achievement or academic performance or academic success. All those are good ways to get the same term and synonyms that match that term within the database. Without you even having to take all the time to be like what other keywords can I use some databases. Go ahead and give you some that you can choose through. And I find that useful because sometimes I'll look at something and be like, oh, I did not even think of that word. So that that really is helpful. Take advantage of that. Because a lot of times that is just there to help you. And then one of my other favorite things to do is whenever you find an article that you is just perfect you're like it this this captures everything I'm talking about. This is the only article I can find on this. A lot of the databases if you look at like the abstract or the main page of it, you'll see it has like subject tags. And that's also a good way to change up your search tactics, because these subject tags that they help connect you to more articles with those same subject tags. So, those are really good to help you kind of see, oh, there's, there's more out there than than just academic, what does that say achievement. Maybe you're like, oh, this structural one is really, really good. So, those are good there. That's, that's pretty, that's most of what I do whenever I'm trying to look at keywords and jump from thing to thing. So I find those strategies really helpful for that. I'm going to talk about some other things you can try when you might not find what you're looking for. It's important to realize sometimes there are sometimes reasons why you might not find anything for the topic you're searching for. I think it's helpful to ask the question, are you writing about a recent event, like if you were trying to write a paper about the effects of COVID long term on people. We've not been in it for that long. So there aren't really academic articles published on that yet. There could also be writing about a new movie or a new piece of music that was released recently, or something else that's really new and novel that hasn't been written about yet. I think it's important to just be aware that scholarly sources take time to be published. It takes a while for people to write the sources, but then they also, if it's going to be submitted to a peer reviewed journal, have to submit it to that journal, get it reviewed by people who also work in their industry. And then usually they'll get feedback and go through multiple revisions before it's actually published. So that can take upwards of a year. So just be aware if you're choosing a topic that's fairly recent, you might not find anything specifically about that. So you may have to choose a related source. Like you could write about the pandemic or epidemic in, I think it was 1918 or sometime around that time, if you wanted to kind of make a comparison that you couldn't find scholarly sources about the current pandemic, for example. So I think a really important thing to keep in mind when doing research in general is to be flexible. So you might choose a topic and you're either not finding anything or you're finding way too many sources and it's too hard to go through. So your topic might be too narrow or it might be too broad. You might also have to change your topic. If you choose something that's way too specific and there's nothing published about it yet. You might just not be able to find anything scholarly for it. If it's okay with your professor if you use popular sources, you can definitely do that. But if it's a requirement for the course that you need scholarly sources and they just don't exist yet, you may have to shift your topic or change it a little bit. You can also try using related sources like I mentioned with looking at other pandemics if you were going to write something about COVID. You could kind of make comparisons there even though there's not a lot of academic research published yet about the current one. But really it's important that you choose a topic that you're excited about over anything else. As long as it meets the requirements of your assignment, your professor is okay with it. Choosing a topic you're excited about makes your life a lot easier because it makes doing the research a lot more interesting. If you choose something you don't care about it's not very fun to look at the sources. Also I'd recommend to sometimes it's really helpful just to take a break. I know when I was an undergrad at UT and would try to do a paper at the last minute, staring at the screen and trying to go through a bunch of sources at once is really exhausting. And sometimes too if you've been searching for a while it's hard to come up with new ideas for different words to search. Or you may need a break because you just can't think about the sources that you're finding right now. So definitely take a break walk away from your computer. Go get a snack if you need to walk outside. Sometimes that'll be enough to kind of refresh your mind a little bit and give you some different strategies for searching. If that doesn't help, ask for help. I know most of your research assignments you probably have to work on yourself. Like if you're writing a paper a lot of times those are not group projects. But that definitely doesn't limit you from asking other people for help. So you can definitely talk to your friends or classmates and say, Hey, if you were searching for this topic, what kind of words would you use to search? You can also talk with us. There's a chat button on the library's homepage and I put a screenshot up here where that chat button is. As long as we have someone online, that chat button is going to have that little green bubble on the side there. So you can get help from there anytime that the library is open. It does connect with someone who works at UT libraries. So we know what kind of resources we have and we can help you there. And I want to stress too, you're not bothering us if you ask us questions. It's literally what we're here for when we like helping people. Also to you can reach out to your professor and ask for clarification, especially if you've got a problem where you're not sure if your topic is too narrow or too broad, or if you want to change your topic because you're not finding enough sources for it. I definitely recommend asking your professor because they're going to be the person who's grading your paper eventually anyway. And they do usually appreciate you asking before you just go ahead and change topics completely. So those are really the strategies that we wanted to share with you. So you can make your research process easier if you get stuck. Some people shared we asked a question before you signed up for the the workshop as well. What kind of strategies do you use. And a few people mentioned that they asked for help from their friends or their professor so that is a really good step to take. At this point we'll go ahead and stop the recording after I pull up this end of session survey slide. So if you will go to this link at the top of this slide and fill out the end of session survey it lets us know how this went. Also if you need proof that you attended this you can get that through the survey as well and definitely check out our schedule for other workshops. Next week our topic is evaluating sources, how to decide what to site and what does authority mean in different contexts. So we can stop the recording and we'll take questions now.