Research often begins with curiosity.  What interests you?  What questions do you have?  Who else has been interested in and talking about this idea or topic?  Where do your ideas fit in?  

"Searching as strategic exploration" is a facet of information literacy, which is the term librarians use to describe how we seek, find, evaluate, and use information in all aspects of our lives in order to answer questions, make decisions, create new knowledge, and participate in society and culture. Searching for information is an open, iterative, nonlinear, and creative process.  As you learn more, you encounter more questions and potential pathways to understanding.  Your initial research topic or question rarely stays the same throughout the process.

At the same time there is a strategic process in searching for information that helps you move forward.  There are three questions to ask yourself as you begin to search for sources:

1.  Who is interested in and talking about my topic or question?  

2.  What are the search tools I can use to find what others have said or are saying?  

3.  How can I best use these search tools to construct queries that result in relevant and appropriate sources of information?

The sections on Academic Sources, Primary Sources, and Additional Resources (located on the right navigation menu) will help you answer these questions for different types of sources.