ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to assist novice researchers, some of whom are high school students. Upper-division and graduate students may not need the step-by-step guidance provided for navigating online databases, but the overarching process of winnowing down references will apply to all students, both undergraduates and graduates. The steps are: formalize institutional affiliation with university library; set up online access credentials and/or proxy server; inquire about university library research workshops; select a search engine that best suits needs and familiarize with how online databases function. The steps also include: experiment with the "advanced search" feature; identify an array of subject keywords to locate sources; identify additional databases that may be useful for field of study and repeat the search procedures with other databases. The majority of academic primary source literature is available online. In fact, there is an increasing number of academic journals that exclusively publish their material in digital format.
