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Library

Student Research Guide

Locating Resources

Use the Qatar catalog menu option to discover

  • books
  • government documents
  • bibliographies

... and more for your thesis research project.

Use HoyaSearch or Google Scholar to discover

  • articles
  • conference proceedings
  • databases

The Georgetown Libraries subscribe to hundreds of databases specific to various programs, certificates and disciplines, so there will definitely be resources to meet your needs.

An important skill for all thesis students is reference mining.  Reference mining means following the citations of others so as to expand your search and gather additional resources from experts or authorities in a field/discipline efficiently. Learning what resources, ideas, and theories have influenced and shaped other researchers' scholarly work will help you formulate and refine your own research. 

There are two dimensions to reference mining:

  • Backward reference mining is when you review the list of works cited or bibliography of a scholarly work, thus giving you a snapshot of the thinking, processes, and research available at the time that research was published.
  • Forward reference mining is when you investigate whether a scholarly work was cited by other scholars after its publication. Google Scholar and Jstor are two tools to help you determine the value or impact of a resource and to understand how that resource has shaped subsequent research and scholarship.

See your Subject librarian for help in determining which strategies and specialized resources will be most appropriate for your research.  

 

Georgetown University Library is part of ILLiad, an international consortium of academic and research libraries. Researchers at Georgetown University have access to the scholarly resources of other institutions through this partnership.
 
The Illiad system can be used to request articles and, to a degree, book chapters not available through GU. The first time you login to ILLiad, you will be asked to provide a NetID and password. Fill out the form and you can begin making requests. You will be notified via email when your request is available for download from you ILLiad account.