When searching for literature, it is important to make sure you are searching the appropriate type of literature. This means academic journals and academic books, and appropriate grey literature such a government reports (if applicable). Searching Google will bring up many thousands of results, few of which would be appropriate to use in an academic piece of writing such as your literature review.
To ensure that 1. you can actually access the items you find and 2. that they are of appropriate academic quality, we advise searching the library's collections of books, journal articles, and grey material rather than Googling your topic. These collections have been quality-checked and approved for academic use.
The boxes below will tell you how to search the library. There are videos on the step-by-steps of finding material, as well as understanding databases. Information on advanced searching tips can be found in the next tab.
To have the best experience using our databases, always access them through the library website. Going directly to the database by typing the URL in to the address bar, or by googling the databases and going in through that URL, can result in authentication errors. Sometimes we have an IADT-specific access URL which you'll access through the library.
If you want to check if we subscribe to a particular journal, you can search the title of it in our eJournal Finder. If the title appears in the search results, it means we have access to it.
This step is useful if you find a journal article elsewhere online, as you can check if you have access to it through IADT. If not, it may be best to move on to other articles.
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Before you conduct your search, you must seriously consider the topic at hand and what to include in your search. If the search isn't correct from the beginning, the whole literature review will end up flawed.
Some things to think about in relation to your topic and keywords are:
Your search is likely to be complex and involve multiple steps to do with different subjects, what are often called "strands" or "strings" in the search. You can have a look at other literature reviews for an idea of what's involved in creating a comprehensive search.
Most people should start by finding all the articles on Topic A, then moving on to Topic B, then Topic C (and so on), then combining those strands together using AND. This will then give you results that mention all those topics. See the advanced searching tab for information on how to do this type of search.
A database is a collection of online journals and resources. Companies (such as JSTOR or EBSCO) own the right to host the journals online, and the Library buys subscriptions to these databases so you can access those journal titles.
There are both general and subject-specific databases which you can use to search for your literature. Here is a link to the Library's list of databases - just click "Online Journals & Databases", and click on the name of the database you want to access. You can also see the list of databases in the image below. Ask your lecturer which subject databases apply to you.
As each database is run by a different company, each has their own log in processes. Many will automatically bring up the IADT log in screen. To log in, enter your student number as the username (e.g. N00123456) and your regular IADT password. Do not enter your email as the username.
Other databases will have their own login process where the log in isn't automatically prompted - rather you will have to search for IADT from a list of institutions and enter your student number and password that way. You will know this has been successful when a message saying something like "Access provided through Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art Design & Technology" shows up at the top of the page. A good example of this process is Project Muse.
General databases include JSTOR, Taylor & Francis, and EBSCO Databases. To access EBSCO, click "EBSCO Databases" in the link above, then click "EBSCOhost Research Databases". A list will come up of all databases under the EBSCO umbrella. Click the boxes to select or deselect which databases you want to search. Then, enter a search term, and narrow your results down using the filters on the left-hand side as appropriate.
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