Locating+Textual+Resources

This page describes various strategies for finding textual resources (papers, books, etc) to support your research (and fill your literature review). This task is closely related to organizing resources.

=Electronic Resources= Electronic resources have the benefit of portability and intertextual (within the text) searching. The major drawbacks of electronic resources (an inability to highlight or write in margins) can be alleviated with the proper tools, which also can serve an organizational function. However, finding electronic resources can be challenging, and even though it is easier to share electronic files, the retain the copyright protections of their paper brethren, so a researcher should be careful about sharing such files and be aware of copyright law.

There are numerous tools for searching for electronic resources, including Google Scholar (a implementation of the popular Google search engine applied to scholarly works), and numerous online databases and repositories. = = =Physical Resources= Sometimes there is no substitute for a physical book with real pages. There are numerous avenues to finding physical resources:

Libraries
K-State Libraries Interlibrary Loan Manhattan Public

Books for Rent
With the rising costs of textbooks, rental programs - where you rent the textbook for a semester and then return it to the rental company, have become popular.

Books for Purchase
In addition to brick-and-mortar stores, books can be purchased from a number of online retailers. Bigwords is an online aggregation service that can help locate the best prices available amongst many sites.