How to Work with a Professional Librarian

Consulting a professional librarian or an information specialist can jumpstart your literature search. These professionals will help you be more efficient by honing your search terms, eliminating redundancies and dead ends, and identifying the most relevant sources of information. If you have any type of university or medical affiliation, you may have access to professional librarian services for free. Many states offer these services for free to any resident citizen. Information specialists are a growing profession of consultants; you may find a referral to them from a local public librarian.

Request a consultation and be prepared to share what you are looking for (e.g., peer reviewed articles, practitioner or popular articles), a time range (e.g., are studies older than 1999 really going to reflect the features you are studying?), and key terms that will help focus the search (e.g., AAC, augmentative communication, communication, language development, etc.). If you know researchers who have published on the topic you are interested in, let the librarian know so he or she can look up their articles to work backwards and see which keywords are used to define these types of studies.

Annotated l ist of research journal databases

Before engaging in any research initiative, it is important to identify other studies within the field that are related to your project. This will help you determine gaps in the research base, shape your study design, and refine your research questions. Online databases offer a convenient alternative to library research; however, most require a subscription fee. Students and faculty members have access to many of the most commonly used databases and some states allow resident citizens access through the library portal. You will also find that some literature is available online, and can be identified through a simple Google Scholar search. Following are some of the most frequently used research journal databases.

• EBSCO has served the library industry for more than 60 years. EBSCO provides customers with an integrated service that combines reference databases, subscription management, online journals, books, linking services and A-to-Z solutions.
• ERIC, the Education Resources Information Center, is an online digital library of education research and information. ERIC is sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education. ERIC provides ready access to education literature to support the use of educational research and information to improve practice in learning, teaching, educational decision-making, and research.
• Gale, part of Cengage Learning, is an e-research and educational publishing database for libraries, schools, and businesses. It is a source of reference content as well as an easy-to-use organization of full-text magazine and newspaper articles. GALE creates and maintains more than 600 databases that are published online, in print, as eBooks and in microform. Gale also licenses its proprietary content for integration within web-based information services.
• JSTOR was founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. Today, JSTOR  works with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. With participation and support from the international scholarly community, JSTOR has created a high-quality, interdisciplinary archive of scholarship, is actively preserving over one thousand academic journals in both digital and print formats, and continues to greatly expand access to scholarly works and other materials needed for research and teaching globally.
• PROQUEST creates specialized information resources and technologies that propel successful research, discovery, and lifelong learning. ProQuest offers the expertise of such respected brands as CSA™, UMI^®, Chadwyck-Healey™, SIRS^®, and eLibrary^®. With Serials Solutions^®, Ulrich’s™, RefWorks^®, COS™, Dialog^® and now Bowker^® part of the ProQuest brand family, the company supports the breadth of the information community with innovative discovery solutions that power the business of books and the best in research experience.