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Library Research Guides
Trinity College
Library & Information Technology Services

HIST-300 Night (Cocco)

Created Fall 2025

Start your research

OneSearch is a great place to start with if you aren't sure exactly what you are looking for and want to see what is out there for information!

In OneSearch you can find print and eBooks, journal articles, news, streaming video, images, primary sources and more. 

Remember! Library databases do not function the same way as Google or other search engines. If you put an entire question into the search box, you will get results, but often they may not be relevant to your topic. Follow the steps below to break your question into keywords for better searches!

1. Take your topic or research question and break it into keywords or phrases.

Example) How do the distinct challenges and societal perceptions faced by climate refugees in the United States impact immigration policies?

2. Think of synonyms or related terms to come up with additional keywords you could use.

Example) 

Keyword 1: climate refugees Keyword 2: United States Keyword 3: immigration policies
environmental refugees United States of America migration policies
forced migration America emigration
environmental migration U.S. government policies
climate migration U.S.A. public policy

Hint! Use a thesaurus and the Internet to help you come up with additional keywords.

Search Strings

Combine keywords and phrases to form a "search string."

Example) "climate refugees" AND immigration policies AND "United States"

or... ("climate refugees" OR "climate change") AND immigration AND "United States" AND policies

AND tells the database you are looking for ALL of the listed terms and will narrow your results

OR tells the database you want EITHER of the listed terms and will help expand your results if you're not finding what you're looking for

You can also use NOT to tell the database you do NOT want to see sources with the specified term(s).

Quotes

Notice how key phrases are grouped together with quotation marks.

Ex.) "climate refugees"  /  "United States"

Using quotes tells the database to search for the words together as a phrase instead of searching for each word independently. Note that while this can be a very helpful tool, especially when you are looking for a very specific phrase, sometimes you might want to try searching for the terms without quotes. It's a good idea to try searches using quotes around key phrases and without to see which results in better results.

Filters

Filters are a useful tool in narrowing your search results to the specific type of source you are looking for. The most common filters you will likely use are:

  • Publication Date - typically you will look for sources published within the past 5-10 years, but depending on your research question or topic that range could change.
  • Material Type - this filter is helpful when you are looking specifically for books, articles, or another type of resource. Be sure to consider which resource type will best fit your needs before applying this filter.
  • Peer Reviewed - if you are looking for academic articles, you will most likely want to use the "Peer Reviewed" filter as these articles are often considered the "gold standard" of scholarly articles. 

Although these are the most common types of filters people use when searching for resources, do not limit yourself to these and feel free to explore and use other available filters as you feel are useful and appropriate for your research.

Expand your research

For additional news and newspaper sources, see Databases A-Z: Newspapers & Magazines. 

For additional primary sources, see Databases A-Z: Primary Sources.