This week, armed with last week’s background knowledge and your list of preliminary search terms, it’s time to start finding sources. Using the tools we’ve covered—databases, Google Scholar, and source mining—you’ll quickly discover thousands of possibilities. Yes, thousands!
At this stage, it can be tricky to tell which sources are truly useful. Some will be obvious “spot-on” fits, but others may not seem relevant until later. Don’t just skim titles—pay attention to abstracts, which provide a clearer sense of an article’s content.
Pro tip: Err on the side of caution. Downloading articles costs nothing, and it’s far easier to delete extras later than to retrace your steps and try to find something again.
Find 20 full-text sources using any combination of the tools we discussed.
Save the PDFs of all sources in your shared Google Drive in a folder labeled Potential Sources.
Print the first page only of each article (for bibliographic info + abstract).
On each printed page, highlight the publication date and the part of the title/abstract that shows relevance.
If needed, add a brief note on the page explaining why you think the source is relevant.
Share your collected sources with your faculty mentors (they’re expecting them).
Next week, we’ll cite, annotate, and organize these sources in NoodleTools. For now, focus on gathering a solid set of materials—let’s make a point to uncover some really cool sources!