Being in school very often results in having to do research. This can be for a paper, or a discussion post, or for a class. Students are always doing research. You trot on down to the library, at the college or other, and you, hopefully, engage in conversation with a research librarian.

These magical creatures exist to aid students. Kind of like the kindly shopkeeper or the stray magical beast who gives you the answer to your quest.

Except being in college is not an adventure game. I mean, it is, but not that kind.

Let’s pretend it is the middle of the night and the library is CLOSED!

And the assignment is due tomorrow!

What then?

For a student in this situation, there is probably an online version of the school library.

There is also Google Scholar. Warning, many of the literature hits from Google Scholar is open source. Which may mean they paid to get their article published. It is still a good option though, and better than plain Google.

But the clock is ticking and the assignment is getting hot. You enter your search terms in Google Scholar or the library, and this results in 4,332,662 hits. Far, far too many. This is where you start refining your search question and publication date. Often, schools only want literature or research from the last 5 years.

Through judicious refining, you only have 15 articles to read. You start reading the titles and find that they have little to do with your original search. But they are interesting and you keep reading.

And reading.

And finding.

And reading.

And finding.

Suddenly it is dawn and you can use absolutely none of the articles that you’ve found. You wanted to find articles about prohibition and suddenly you are reading about they made wine in 500 A.D.

This is the research rabbit hole.

You just keep digging yourself deeper in search of good stuff and all you are finding is not usable for this paper/assignment.

Research is a skill.

But even the research librarian has gone down the rabbit hole. Just ask them.

You are still going to go down rabbit holes. Being aware of the possibility of a fruitless search lets you make decisions about what to read and boundaries to put on your search.

Seriously though, reach out to the research librarian at the school. Or at the actual library in your town. They will have strategies to help.