ALL ABOUT....

Our All About pages provide advice and glossaries on a range of topics. You will encounter these topics at all stages of your research journey.

Table of contents

1. ALL ABOUT: Archive Terms

   Inventory, extent, provenance, and more - a glossary of specialized terms you’re likely to encounter during archival research..

2. ALL ABOUT: Controlled Vocabulary

   The sets of terms that databases use for subjects, formats, methodologies, and more.

3. ALL ABOUT: Finding Your Materials

   Use these pro tips to track down any citation.

4. ALL ABOUT: Getting to Know Your Field

   Tips for familiarizing yourself with the scholarship in a particular area of study.

5. ALL ABOUT: Handling Special Collections Materials

   How to safely examine rare books, photographs, archives, and other fragile or complicated materials.

6. ALL ABOUT: Library Database Terms

   Booleans, abstracts, ISSN, and more - a glossary of the words you’ll encounter most often when doing library research.

7. ALL ABOUT: Productivity Tools

   Zotero, Pomodoro technique, Obsidian, and more - tips for learning which tools your peers are using and a checklist for figuring out what will best meet your own needs.

8. ALL ABOUT: Reference Sources

   Learn to make sense of specialized look-up books for academics, such as encyclopedias, directories, bibliographies, and indexes. Discover their content, their structure, and their quirks. 

9. ALL ABOUT: Refining Your Searches

   Filters, sorts, and drop-downs - Make the most of common search modifiers.

10. ALL ABOUT: The Research Ecosystem

    Map out the full picture of organizations and institutions that might hold materials you can use for your research.

11. ALL ABOUT: Search Operators & Wildcards

    AND, OR, NOT, *, NEAR/5, and other special commands you can use to make your searches more precise and efficient.