Discover Your Databases - Prep

Assess your database needs (10 minutes)

Reflect on practices in your own discipline

What’s especially challenging about research in your field?
Are there materials that are hard to learn about or get a hold of?
What makes it hard to tell if you’re on the right track?
What’s hard about using general databases for this field? If you think of the library catalog, Academic Search Premier, or Google Scholar, what features do you wish they had that would better serve the kind of research you do? Hint: you may find what you’re looking for in a discipline-specific database.

Reflect on the databases you use

What problems do you encounter when you try to translate research tasks into a search?
What databases do you use most often right now? What needs do they meet for you?

Compare different disciplines (5 minutes)

Library resources and search experiences often differ a lot from subject area to subject area.

Take a moment to learn a little bit about the top resources and search methods in a different discipline. Compare what you find with what’s true for your discipline: does this help you find new insight on your search habits and database options?

Explore our FAQs

Harvard Library’s FAQ series on How To Do Research In identify keyword categories and the top two databases for different areas of study.

Notice some of the differences in the kinds of search keywords that work best, as well as the kinds of databases available, for different research materials and methodologies.

Chat with a friend

Ask a friend in another discipline about how they would answer the questions above.

Introduction | Prep | Activity