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Research Help

This guide will help you at all stages of the research process, from choosing a topic to citing your sources.

Searching Online

If you want to conduct your research outside of the CSM databases, there are other publicly available research resources (not requiring CSM logins) that may be helpful, including:

Google (and Google Scholar) Tips and Tricks

  1. Use quotation marks around your search terms to search for the words in the exact order you would like, instead of separately.Google - "quotation marks"
     
  2. Use intitle: to retrieve webpages with your keywords in the title of the webpage.Google - intitle: search
     
  3. Use site:. to retrieve webpages from URLs in the domain (.gov, .edu, .org) you specify.  
    Google - site:. search
     
  4. Use - (a hyphen or minus sign) in front of words to exclude them from your search results.
    Google - NOT
     
  5. Use OR in between words to have either or both of the words included in your search results. OR must be capitalized. This is a good way to search for synonyms.
    Google - OR
    In the above example, Google will find results that include (election AND fraud) and (voter AND fraud).
     
  6. Use filetype: to retrieve specific types of files (instead of html webpages). Works for finding most file types.
    filetype: search
     
  7. Use several strategies at once for very specific results.
    Google - all of the above search strategies!