Welcome to the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library and the History 501/2/3 Economics OWHL Guide.
Economics research may present different challenges than the research process you are used to in your previous classes. Economists, politicians, and social scientists produce a lot of information, and sorting through it to find useful information can be difficult. Here are a few tips to help you get started.
- Where should I start?: In general, you have three options: a specific country (ex: United States), an event (ex: passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act), or an issue (ex: gender pay gap). You will probably touch upon all three eventually in your research, but one of these will be your first way in.
- Read carefully. As you read news articles, reports, blogs, and so on, look for words that will point you in the right direction for other research (i.e. "A recent World Bank research report states..." Make a note to go and find that World Bank research report).
- Bibliographic Mining. Look at the bibliographies of the sources you already have. This is a great place to find additional sources that might be relevant and helpful.
- Use the Full Text Finder. If you have a journal article citation, search for the journal in the Full Text Finder to see if it is available through one of the OWHL's databases. If it isn't available, simply stop by the library and ask for helping submitting an inter-library loan (ILL) request.
- Books and articles will only get you so far. Economics research takes many different forms (policy reports, original research, working papers, statistics...) and much of it can be found through an effective Google search. Remember to always evaluate any sites you find before incorporating the information into your own research.
