Skip to Main Content

CONS 440/SOCL 340: Political Ecology and Conservation

Research strategy

Welcome!  Get started on your research for your project.

Some helpful hints...

  • Questions? Don't hesitate to email or schedule an in-office research consultation.
  • Begin by familiarizing yourself with current and available information and generating keywords and phrases about your topic. Then, search for those keywords and phrases using:
    • The library catalog (for interdisciplinary information resources at W&M) or Worldcat (for national and some international resources available through ILL)
    • Google Scholar for interdisciplinary scholarly resources
    • Databases and other specialized resources in this guide
  • Set up your research strategy and information management
  • Research background information about your topic
  • Do a preliminary literature search in major databases
  • Discover web resources,"grey literature" (non-peer-reviewed scholarly and substantive info), government info, statistics, etc. 
  • Gather or generate analysis of your own information
  • Be sure to evaluate what you are finding! 

Search the W&M Libraries Catalog

Search WorldCat: Libraries around the world


Use WorldCat when you can't find what you want through Swem! It searches article databases and library catalogs from libraries all over the world. Request items through Interlibrary Loan with one click using the "FindIt@WM" button.

Google Scholar Search