If you are applying for a fellowship or opportunity with a research componant - know where to start to find research sources by topic.
Explore SSU Library's online research guides - here you will find the best sources for research on your topic in one place (encyclopedias, databases, recommended Internet sources, etc.) Here you can start mining for information for your project idea.
Annual reviews can be another source for research overviews. Published annually these reviews cover the important topics of study each year in 40 different disciplines. Some are available in our databases - go to the library's home page and perform a journal title search for the journal title. If a journal is not available try interlibrary loan.
And you can always contact your research and instruction librarian!
Search the library catalog for books, eBooks, and films on your topic. Search Salem State holdings, or broaden search to View Entire Collection.
Search WorldCat for library holdings around the world.
Search subject specific databases or multi-disciplinary databases to find scholarly research on your topic.
To do so visit the library's database page or the research guide for your field of study.
Strategies for following citations:
1 - Backwards - When you find the perfect article for your topic, check out the citations that author used. These will tell you what sources and ideas influenced the author at the time the article was written, and you may want to locate these cited sources to use in your own research. Some databases provide links to articles cited in a reference list. You can also search our Periodicals Directory for the journal title of the citation you are looking for. The Directory will tell you if we have it and link you to it in our databases where you can then locate the article you are looking for.
2 - Forwards - Find out whether an article was cited by other authors after it was published. This will give you an idea of how important this research was in shaping other subsequent scholarship. Some databases provide "Cited by" links that will connect you to other articles that have cited a certain article. You can also use Web of Knowledge database to use its Web of Science Cited Reference Search to see how many times an article was cited by others.
3 - Reviews - In some fields of study articles of a specific type (such as Literature Reviews, Meta-Analysis, and Systematic Reviews) may provide a good overview of important studies on a topic. You can then pursue articles that are in these reference list using our Periodicals Directory.