Getting Research Help
Book a Research Appointment
Get lengthier and more specialized research help with our book an appointment service.
Visit our Research Help Desk
Visit the Research Help Desk on the main floor of the Library for help.
Attend a Workshop
Workshops are scheduled throughout the term.
Online Guides and Videos
How-to guides and videos on writing, research and citation
Tutorials
The following brief tutorials will help you learn skills that will make researching easier. Video tutorials can be found below.
Research Skills Tutorial - A step-by-step guide to organizing, researching, and writing an essay.
Finding Books at the Library - The Library Catalogue
The library catalogue is where you should go to look for books, videos and DVDs held by the library. E-books (online books) are also included. This is the most efficient way to search for a known title or known author (use the tabs above the search box to search by author or title). Note that the library catalogue does not include journal articles. Use the ‘your library account’ option that appears on the left hand menu of the catalogue home page to check due dates and fines and to renew materials.
Finding Journal Articles - Search Everything
Search Everything is the single largest index of journal article content available at TMU, and includes items in our catalogue (books, DVDs, e-books) and beyond. Use Search Everything when you want to do the broadest search possible. It is a good starting point, but depending on your research, you may also want to use a discipline-specific resource like the subject specific databases. Search everything can be searched like Google, but offers refining limits on the left-hand side of the search results. Most useful are the options to limit to scholarly or peer-reviewed journal articles, and to limit by subject. Search everything has millions of records and spans across all disciplines, so you may find that you need to refine your search to avoid having irrelevant items bury your articles of interest.
Finding Journal Articles - Subject Specific Databases
Subject-specific article databases can be found in our subject research guides.
Using advanced search techniques (such as Boolean logic) will help you to find better results.
The benefit of using subject specific databases is that your search is automatically limited to content in journals relevant to your general area of study. Advanced options like subject thesauri are usually available to help you zero in on the most relevant materials to your research. Search Everything may not cover all of the journals (either at all, or for all years of publication) in every subject area, so you will probably find things in subject specific database searches that you didn’t find in your Search Everything hits.
Video Tutorials
Additional Videos
Research
- Where to start your research
- What are Scholarly Sources?
- Find Resources in your Subject Area
- Is this an appropriate source?
- Finding Articles from Citations
- Quantitative vs Qualitative Articles
- Understanding License Terms of Use
Searching
More Toronto Metropolitan University Library videos are available on the TMU Library YouTube Channel