Searching ProQuest
The following image contains recommendations to searching the ProQuest database on your topic.
- Identify your focus
- Identity your keywords, main concepts, and/or alternative terms based on your focus
- For established genres, use more than one keyword to help you narrow (one concept per box)
- Use the drop-down menu to control the number and relevance of your sources. There ae three recommended fields to search; see what happens when you change the fields:
- Anywhere
- Anywhere except full text
- Document title
Don't be afraid to experiment with the above and to mix and match your options. If you don't get results, try a different strategy. If you get too many results, how can you narrow your results?
Try it now with ProQuest:
Searching JSTOR
JSTOR is a database that contains scholarly and academic sources, mostly article sources. It is a much smaller database than ProQuest, but the sources in this database are very rich, especially for humanities-related topics such as music.
- If your genre is emerging or not very established, you will not likely find too much in this database. It is always worth a try. You will want to go broad first by entering just one concept.
- It is best to start with one concept, then narrow by adding a secondary concept or select a different field to search for more relevant results.
- See the images below for how best to search for sources on this assignment:
