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University Library Services

Study Skills- Tips for a Successful Literature Search

5 steps to making a search plan and making the most of the sources you find.

Help finding e-resources

When you’re looking for e-resources, such as ebooks and journal articles there are a number of tools you can use - we recommend you start with Library Search (on the library web page). You will be able to access any resources that University of Sunderland subscribe to with your University User ID and password. An increasing amount of research is being published open access (free to read) too, for example on Google Scholar.

Below we’ve curated a few guides to help you navigate University of Sunderland online resources and wider open access material. Expand the sections below to browse the help guides available.

Find books & ebooks

All about ebooks

Your questions answered.

Open this guide

Search for ebooks

Video demonstration.

Open this guide

Find journal articles

Search for journal articles

Video demonstration.

Open this guide

Make the most of journal articles

Some tips for using journal articles.

Open this guide

Tips & tricks for advanced searches

Explore search strategies.

Open this guide

Tips for finding information online

Citation trails using Google Scholar

Video - learn about citation trails.

Open this guide

Using the Wayback Machine

Search for older or archived web pages.

Open this guide