Practical Research
for Swarthmore Innovation Fellows

Simon Elichko (they/he)

Social Sciences & Data Librarian

selichk1@swarthmore.edu

All the resources we discussed:

• Institutional peers, IPEDS data visualized by Chronicle of Higher Education
  • Set up your Swarthmore access to Chronicle of Higher Ed
  • Access available: Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist

• Mills, Anna and Angell, Nate, Are We Tripping? The Mirage of AI Hallucinations (February 06, 2025). Social Science Research Network.

• Research guide: Topic Overviews

• Swarthmore College Archives (includes archived college websites and student publications like the Phoenix, Halcyon yearbook, etc.)

• Web archives: Wayback Machine (Internet Archive)

• FindPolicy Consulting & Advisory Firms search engine

• Research guide: Educational Studies resources

  • ERIC database
• Research guide: Environmental Studies resources
• Tripod Library Search • search for marketing books (2022-25)

Mirage image credit: Brahan Milla

What we'll go over:

• Practical research in higher education
• Reality-checking research: skills and resources
• Lots of specific tools and tips you can use

Practical research
in higher education

Carnegie Classifications & Peer Institutions

Making more persuasive arguments by understanding institutional context 

Swarthmore access to
Chronicle of Higher Education
and other news resources

Considering AI accuracy for finding info about programs at other colleges & universities

 How can you reality-check outputs from generative AI tools?

(+ do better research in general)

• Proactively identify relevant expertise and reliable sources
• Build your search engine literacy
• Seek out resources that are tailored to your research area in addition to general tools

Proactively identify relevant expertise and reliable sources

• Who is in a position to know about your topic?
• Are they part of a larger knowledge community you might want to draw on?
  • Some examples include academic disciplines, companies, industries, professions and professional organizations, non-profit organizations, other groups
• What kinds of perspectives do you want to take into account?
  • What are the interests of each? Blind spots?
• Do you need to understand the past as well as the present?

Identifying experts & expertise:
Topic Overviews Research Guide

Helpful resources include The Conversation 
and The Journalist's Resource

Understanding the (recent) past
Web Archives

Using archived versions of websites can let you:

• View an archived version of a page that's no longer available online: https://web.archive.org/web/20120318201527/http://weblog.greenpeace.org/makingwaves/archives/2008/10/coal_gets_the_boot_in_the_gree.html
   
• See older versions of pages as they changed over time: https://web.archive.org/web/20030423055259/http://nj.gov/
   

This can be particularly helpful when you need to understand how an issue, program, policy, etc. developed over time.

Learning about earlier efforts and discussions on-campus:

Swarthmore College Archives

Resources from the College Archives:

• Get Started with College Archives Research
• Archived TriCo College Websites
  • Tip: Use tab "Search Page Text"
     
• Contact College Archivist David Obermayer with questions about researching college history (archives@swarthmore.edu)

Build your search engine literacy

• Try comparing the output of different search engines for the same search
  • Examples include Google, DuckDuckGo, and others
     
• Related to choosing your expert(ise) first, consider searching specific websites or domains:
  • Add site:.edu to Google search to limit results to US higher education -- example search  (site:.ac.uk for UK higher ed)
  • FindPolicy's Consulting & Advisory Firms search limits results to 12 major firms (e.g. Deloitte, McKinsey, etc.)
  • Consider using search engines as alternative algorithms for finding relevant content on social media

How to search social media through Google 

Basic set-up

your keyword site:youtube.com

your keyword site:swarthmore.edu 

How to search multiple platforms at once:
railroad strike  site:instagram.com | site:tiktok.com | site:pinterest.com
 

railroad strike  site:reddit.com | site:facebook.com

• Put the URL immediately after site:  (don’t leave spaces)

• Leave spaces around the pipe | separating multiple sites.

Check for resources tailored to your research area

Swarthmore College → higher education →
Educational Studies resources → ERIC Database

ERIC Database: Use the Education Level feature to find articles focused on higher education. Helps you avoid research on K-12 education or other industries.

Sustainability-related projects →
Environmental Studies resources

Find ebooks from the libraries in Tripod, for example: marketing, published 2022-25

Reach out!

Working with a librarian is a great way to get help and also improve your skills.

• Meet with Simon or email selichk1
• All of the subject librarians