Closed searches

The point of closed searches is to enable serious and credible scholarly research. If you're investigating representations of gender in Elizabethan drama, or recent advances in gene sequencing, or theories of computation, you're not going to find a lot of useful information with a search engine like Google or a subject directory like Yahoo! （though admittedly, as noted, good subject directories make excellent starting points for exploring a particular topic）. To come back one more time to our earlier example of a research paper on capital punishment, once you've zeroed in on a particular topic, you'll want to turn to a closed search. Let's suppose you've decided to focus on one aspect of the debate over capital punishment—why the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972 and then in effect changed its mind four years later. Well, you need to find out what other scholars have said about this. What other literature is already out there on your topic? What are the major perspectives and controversies among scholars? Are there primary materials in archives that should be consulted? All of these questions are best explored by searching law reviews, academic journals, and other scholarly repositories of information.

　　The first piece of advice for students trying to conduct effective closed searches is simple: use your library's home page as your main research portal. Libraries have learned how to integrate the Internet into their holdings, and the college library now serves as a crucial research gateway to many databases. My school, for instance, offers access to a dozen different periodical indexes （not to mention a myriad of other research tools like online dictionaries, encyclopedias, reference books, links to online newspapers and magazines, and much more）. Some of these periodical indexes list only citations （Medline, ERIC, MLA Bibliography, among others） and some are full-text like IDEAL and JSTOR. One of my favorites is Lexis-Nexis. It provides a massive amount of political, legal, and business information, full-text search and retrieval of major newspapers and magazines from around the world, and lots more.

　　The only hard part in all this is learning how to use the search tools. Most libraries provide online tutorials and FAQs which you can find from the library's home page, and of course asking a real live reference librarian always works well. One tip: most college libraries can be accessed remotely by authorized users （i.e., you the student）. Directions are usually available at the library's home page or from a librarian. The advantage of remote access is that you can tap into all the library's licensed databases from wherever you happen to be, on campus, off campus, or across the country.

　　A final word on open and closed searches: it's useful to think of research as a process of spiraling in towards a narrow, precise target. Early on, use open searches to learn about a subject. Search engines will give a sense of how the subject plays in the popular mind. Subject directories will point the way to good scholarly sites that could serve as gateways for further research. Once you're ready to start thinking about specific topics and arguments, it's time to move most of your efforts to closed searches, and for that you'll want to become familiar with your library's online search tools. But as you get better and better at diving into the vasty depths of the Internet, don't forget the invaluable help real people with expertise can provide. Ask librarians, grad students, and professors to help get you pointed in the right direction.