Religion and Culture Colloquium

Introductory tutorials

• Tutorial: How can I tell if my source is scholarly?
• Tutorial: How do find scholarly books
• Tutorial: Finding an article when you only know the title

Regardless of what you are searching for, or which tools you use, keep in mind the following tips (although be aware that not all databases support each of these options)

1. Tutorial: Developing a research question
2. Consider word variations and synonyms
   • think about how others might refer to your ideas
   • e.g, death rituals --> death OR dying OR funeral OR mortuary 
   • Tutorial: Using search words effectively
3. Search Tactics

   What is the tactic?	What does the tactic do?	Examples
   Boolean AND	Use AND to ensure that all terms appear in every search result.	heterodox AND gnostic
   Boolean OR	Use OR to ensure that at least one term appears in every search result. Tutorial: Better searching using AND, OR, NOT	indigenous OR aboriginal
   Phrase searching	Use “quotation marks” to find more than one term in a row.	“islamic law”
   Truncation	Use an asterisk* at the end of a term to include multiple endings. (sometimes $) Tutorial: Better searching using truncation	religio* religion, religions, religious, religiosity, religousness
   Wildcard	Use a question mark ? within a term to search for variations of a single character.	decoloni?e decolonize, decolonise
   Proximity	Use NEAR/n to search for terms within n words of each other (sometimes ADJ/n)	"music therapy" NEAR/5 child* OR adolescent*

4. Employ search limiters (available limiters depend on the database)
   • peer reviewed, article type, date
5. Identify key publications and authors
   • note citations, and cited references, repeated author names
6. Document and track everything you do in the steps above

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Research example

• Davis, D. E. (2019). Strong Black Women, Depression, and the Pentecostal Church (Page 23)
• Tutorial: Planning a literature review

Tutorial: Finding scholarly articles on a topic

• Start at the Religion and Culture Subject guide
• Researchers rely on curated collections of content according to discipline. Some of the most helpful databases for your research can be found on this page
• If you are conducting interdisciplinary research, you may want to consider either using those listed on the Interdisciplinary Subject guide, or consult a guide under the subject of your choice on the Subjects page
• The library has over 400 different databases that you could consider

• What does it look like to do utilize all these databases? See these examples of what Masters and PhD students have done before you, including methodologies and sources.

  • Tieszen, Pamela K. "A Phenomenological Study of Women Administrators' Experiences in Mennonite High Schools." University of St. Thomas (Minnesota), 2017. (see page 11)

• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Grey literature is information produced outside traditional scholarly publications. It includes reports, policy briefs and reports, major research papers, white papers, working papers, government documents, speeches, etc. 

There is no single database that covers grey literature well, so Google is helpful in cases like this. Consider the following tips when searching Google, often using these in combination:

• limit to domain
  • site:ca, site:edu
• limit to document type
  • filetype:pdf, filetype:pptx
• think how a document might phrase something, enclose that in quotes
  • heterodox "sufi islam" filetype:pdf site:edu

As mentioned in the Colloquium workshop:

• WorldCat: world's largest library catalogue; request materials outside of Omni libraries through interlibrary loan
• Graduate student workspace (Waterloo library, 3rd floor)

Not mentioned, but helpful:

• Link to Laurier Scholars Commons, Religion & Culture MAs/PhD theses
• R&C Major Research Papers