Hello and welcome to our video tutorial “Basics for Beginners – Introduction to Research”. 
You’ve probably noticed how your instructors go mad when they hear words like “Google” or “Wikipedia”. 
They always tell you to use good quality academic sources in your papers or presentations. 
But what exactly are those sources? And where do you look for them?
The answer is simple. 
You’ll find everything you need on the website of the Göttingen State and University Library.
If you click on the search field in the top right corner of the page, you will see a search menu with the list of catalogues.
If you wish to look for books, select Göttingen University Catalogue.
If you want to browse through online journals, choose Electronic Journals Library.
If you need to expand your search and look for articles, go for the database system DBIS.
Now, when you are ready to set off, there are two roads you can take. 
If you know what book you’re looking for, you can proceed with a citation search. This means, you can search by author or title.
Your approach will be different if what you have at the starting point is a topic. 
In this case, you will use terms that describe your topic to search for literature. 
When searching for sources in the library catalogue, there are a couple of strategies to keep in mind. 
One of them is to use keywords. Whether you are looking for a specific book or simply researching a topic, leave out stop words, 
such as articles or prepositions, and use the terms that are central to your topic. 
To increase your number of results, use truncation. Simply add an asterisk or a question mark at the end 
of the word stem to retrieve results that include different variations of this term. 
For instance, type “econom” and add an asterisk at the end and your search results will include words 
like economy, economics, or economic.
Last but not least, avoid spelling mistakes. Unlike Google, library catalogues do not guess what you mean. 
Hence, if you search for “Shakespear” without the silent “e” at the end, you will get no results. 
Now, let’s see how the citation search in the catalogue works. 
Suppose you’ve found a reference to a book that might be important to your research. 
Look at the reference closely. In our example, you see two names, followed by “eds.”, which means we’re dealing with an edited collection. 
We also know the title and we can use that to search for this book. Since this is a collection, 
the best place to look for it is the library catalogue. 
Go to the website of the library, select Göttingen University Catalogue. Click “advanced search” at the top of the page. 
Write a couple of keywords from the title into the search field. If you’d like to limit your search results to online resources, 
you must tick “online resources” at the bottom of the page. 
We’ll get quite a number of results, but the book we need appears on the first page already. 
If you click on its title, you will find more information on this book and the links below to access it. 
The link with Campuszugriff (campus access) means you can access the book if you’re on campus or if you are connected to the 
campus network via VPN. 
The second link is for accessing the sources from off campus. If you click on it, a login window will appear, 
where you need to provide your library user number and your password. Then, you’ll have access to the book.
On the publisher’s page you will be able to read the book online or download it.
Now, suppose you’d like to expand your search and find articles on your topic. 
Make a list of terms that best describe your topic and, as you might have already guessed, go to the website of the library. 
Select DBIS from the search menu. The website of the database system has German user interface but do not let it stop you. 
What you see on this page is the list of subject areas (Fachübersicht). Suppose you study Natural Sciences. 
Scroll through this list and select “Naturwissenschaft allgemein”. You will then see a list of top-databases on your subject. 
In our case, one of them is Web of Science. If we click on it, we’ll see a description page with the link. Use the link to access the database. 
Again, if you do not have the VPN, you’ll first be asked to provide you library user number and the password. 
When in the database Web of Science, type in your search terms (the terms that describe your topic) 
and select the search key (topic or title, for example). 
Our search has returned over 600 results. You can further refine your results by, 
for example, selecting publication years or a research domain in the left-side bar. 
If you want to check how to access one of the results, click on the SUB button to find out if and where the article is available. 
If the article is available in electronic form, simply click the link following “Full text available via…” or click its DOI link below.
On the page of the publisher you will be able to view or download the article.
If you are looking for more tips and tricks on introduction to research, check out our online course “Searching like a pro” on StudIP. 
You can check our YouTube channel for more basic tips. There, you’ll also find our video tutorial on setting up the VPN client. 
And if you have any questions or concerns, you can always write to us!
