How to Conduct Research
Gathering and evaluating source materials is an important step in the research process. The Cornell Library is a great resource to efficiently and effectively find relevant information for your research. For more on how to conduct research, check out the library's Introduction to Research.
Cornell University Library
Cornell students have access and borrowing privileges from all Cornell libraries. Read more about Cornell Library services
Some libraries that may be helpful for your research include:
Search Terms
Evaluating your sources
Evaluating the sources you find is a crucial step in the process of scholarly research. The questions you ask about books, periodical articles, or multimedia sources are similar whether you're looking at a citation to the item or have the item in hand.
- How to Critically Analyze Information Sources
Lists some of the critical questions you should ask when you consider the appropriateness of a particular book, article, media resource, or website for your research. - Distinguishing Scholarly from Non-Scholarly Periodicals: A Checklist of Criteria.
Shows how to evaluate periodicals by looking at their format, intended audience, and appearance. - Evaluating Web Resources
Lists ways to analyze the websites you find.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a great resource for quickly identifying relevant articles or journals. Most of the articles you find will be behind a paywall. If you have are on-campus and have logged into some Cornell website, the browser should recognize you as coming from Cornell and automatically give you access. If this doesn't happen or if you are off-campus, you can copy the title and paste it into the search bar of the Cornell Library catalog (linked above).
Library Catalog
Cornell Library Catalog
The first place to begin locating sources is to use the library's catalog.
When using the catalog, the "All Fields" search will retrieve matches for your search terms wherever they appear in the description of an item, but you may use the pulldown menu to the right of the search box to limit to title, author, subject, publisher, or call number.
The "Limit your search" function provides options to help narrow your search results, including how you'd like to access resources (online, physical) and in which format (book, journal, microform, etc.).
The Cornell University Library uses Library of Congress (LC) Subject Headings as the standard for subject searching. Limit your search to Subject to retrieve items that contain your search terms as part of their LC heading.
If you find one book relevant to your subject, you can identify others by clicking on the subject heading in the record for that book:
What to do if an item isn't available
If the catalog record indicates that the material is "charged":
This means that someone else has checked out the book. When you click on "request," the system figures out the fastest way to get the item to you. If it's a recall, that takes about two weeks.
If the library does not have a book or if the book you need is already checked out: Borrow Direct
Click on the link to connect to Borrow Direct and search for the book. If it's available from another Ivy League university (plus Johns Hopkins, MIT, Duke, University of Chicago, and Stanford), we will have it shipped to Cornell. The borrowing period is for eight weeks, renewable once. Books arrive in 3-4 business days.
If the library does not have an item that you need (any item -- journal article, DVD, dissertation, etc.): Interlibrary Loan Services
Use ILLiad (InterLibrary Loan Internet Accessible Database) to request to borrow materials from other libraries or have articles scanned for you. Loan period is usually one month. Items can arrive in as little as a few days (or even the next day, in the case of scans) to a couple of weeks. Note: This service will not work for items that Cornell already owns, but are checked out by other borrowers.
If your search returns zero results at Cornell University Library, try searching in "Libraries Worldwide":
