There are a number of strategies for discovering sources beyond keyword searching in the library search bar or a database. Below is a list of strategies with suggestions for when to employ them.
- Browsing full runs of journals.
Do this by clicking on the journal title in a database, and browsing through issues and volumes.
- Journals have develop reputations over their publishing strengths and foci. If you find a particularly good, or exciting article, there may be other articles that are relevant and helpful. Use this technique early on in the research process to find your interlocutors (the scholars whose work you are in conversation with), and central issues in the field.
- Surfing the catalogs of publishers like MIT Press, Minneapolis Press, Taylor & Francis, etc.
Do this by visiting the websites of publishers who have published books you've read.
- Use this when you are trying to assess the scope of scholarship written about your topic early on in your literature review or during revision periods when you sense gaps in your framing. It will help you discover work that is related or adjacent to your topic, but not completely on the mark so you can build out your understanding of the problems and questions in your field. Looking through publishers' catalogs can also help you discover work that your library hasn't bought or monographs that are *very new* and have not been cited yet.
- Reading book reviews in journals.
Do this by returning to journals that have published work you enjoy, and looking at the book reviews, or searching for the tile of a book and adding AND "review".
- These summaries will give you an overview of a book and help you see what it offers the field, and how it relates to your project. Do this when you are considering reading some work, but are not sure of the relevance or its impact.
- Surfing black OA or shadow library sites (Monoskop, Scihub, Are.na, Memoryoftheworld). **
- This is a strategy to seek out well known books with significant demand from people with no or little institutional support. Sometimes this can be used to see what has intellectual value that you otherwise may not have known about.
- Seeking out Zotero Group libraries.
- Do this if you feel like you are missing materials, or want to know what other people in your field are reading.
**If you find work this way, please use a legitimate way to access content, such as putting in an interlibrary loan request or suggesting a purchase.
Also see the Guide to Citation searching for strategies to collect information from bibliographies.
