who am I?

• I'm Ryan, the Data Services Librarian
• I use he/him/his pronouns
• I work with the Economics, Geography, Sociology, Anthropology, & Philosophy departments
• I help people find and use data
• I can help with all stages of your research!
• You can find more at go/ryan/

what are we covering today?

• keyword searching concepts
• literature review sources
• searching for data

keyword searching

• break your question into concepts
• think of synonyms for the concepts: use language from the literature
• be ready to be flexible on which concepts are most important: e.g. is geography really the most important?

Let's try it!

boolean logic

*most databases assume "and"

remember!

• searching the literature is iterative
• learn from your searches
• keep a record of your searches: start a text file

economics literature sources

• EconLit (go/econlit/)
• EconPapers (go/econpapers/)
• Scopus (go/scopus/)
• Google Scholar (scholar.google.com)

finding data

who/what

when
where

who

• what level of observation/unit of analysis
• people (individuals, households, etc)
• organizations (colleges, nations, companies, etc)
• things (cars, crops, houses) 

when

• one point in time: cross sectional
• changes over time: time series
• same group over time: longitudinal/panel
• current data vs historical data

where

• geography: national vs subnational
• not all political or administrative boundaries match up
• level of geography you need affects where you look

data sources

• data archives (UK Data Archive, GESIS, CESSDA)
• data producers (government organizations, academic researchers, private sector, etc)
• look to the literature (i.e. look for data citations)
• look to statistics compilations (ProQuest Statistical Abstracts of the World)

organizing your research

go/zotero/

remember!

go/ryan/