Background Research

There are several approaches to brainstorming, but the primary goal when brainstorming is to generate lots of alternative issues, perspectives and aspects of a topic without censoring them or worrying about their organization.

For any theme and/or issue that you consider, note as many aspects or ideas as come to mind. At this point, don’t worry about whether they are suitable or well-organized. Think freely and broadly. You just want to develop a list of possible avenues for further consideration.

The libraries provide access to many encyclopedias and dictionaries that focus on, or specialize in, particular subject areas. In addition to defining terminology and providing the intellectual history or landscape of issues and subjects, they can also be useful for generating ideas since they often highlight ongoing controversies.

In addition, Wikipedia articles can be useful for generating ideas. As a free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, Wikipedia is often more up to date than traditional encyclopedias. While not considered a scholarly source, its currency makes it particularly helpful in understanding recent developments and discussions in the subject area.

For relevant encyclopedias and/or dictionarires for a subject area, consult York University Library’s Subject Research Guides.

Searches in article databases will provide lists of articles that address your topic. Skimming the article titles and abstracts can quickly reveal the range of issues that scholars are investigating, and suggest aspects of a topic that you may not have considered. York University Library’s subject specific Research Guides will lead you to appropriate article databases for your field. Article databases are often listed under the “Finding Articles” tab in the guides.

A quick scan of relevant books can help generate ideas and provide context and background for a topic.

A useful strategy is to identify one or two books relevant to your topic, find the call numbers, and then browse the library’s bookshelves around those books. See the Research Strategies module for more information on how to identify relevant books using Omni.

Another approach is to identify eBooks in Omni. Note that if you do a keyword search, after your results load, you can apply the filter under Resource Type labelled “Books and eBooks.“  Then apply the “Available online” filter that appears under the Availability options in the filters menu. Click on any eBook that looks highly relevant to your topic in your list of results and scroll to the bottom of the Omni entry for it to see the “Virtual Browse” option which shows closely related eBooks on the same topic as the book you chose. 

When browsing books, an effective and efficient way to generate ideas and get clarification on what the book will cover is to scan the tables of contents, skim the introductory chapters and check the indices for key terms that you are interested in investigating.

While library sources can be useful for generating ideas and doing background research, as highlighted above, don’t rule out the value of information openly available on the web. In addition to conducting searches in web engines such as Google, it can be useful to keep in mind specific types of websites for your subject. For example:  

• company (e.g., Apple Inc.) 
• educational institution (e.g., York University)
• government (e.g., federal, provincial, municipal) 
• personal, archive (e.g., Nelson Mandela Digital Archives) 
• professional or scholarly associations (e.g., American Psychological Association) 
• international body (e.g., United Nations) 

Information found by more focused reading and navigation of these types of sites can be useful for generating ideas and can provide a good starting point for further exploration. 

Generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, can be useful for initial background research and for developing an introductory understanding of an unfamiliar topic or field.  In response to user chats or prompts, they can quickly explain concepts or summarize knowledge on a topic and many of these tools are current and have access to up-to-date web sources.  

However, generative AI tools do not determine whether the information they generate is true. They produce responses by predicting likely words and ideas based on patterns learned from large amounts of data and, in some cases, information retrieved from external sources. Sometimes this information may be inaccurate, misleading or biased. For academic research, AI-generated background information should therefore be treated as a starting point rather than an authoritative source and important information should be verified using reliable sources. 

Podcasts and blogs are a widely used medium for entertainment and leisure but can also be useful for staying informed about current affairs, business trends, or developments in a field or area of study. It can be useful to identify podcasts or blogs on the topic you are interested in to gain initial ideas about a topic. Remember, however, anyone can publish a blog or a podcast, and the motivations behind their creation can vary widely, so it is essential that you think critically about authority and potential bias when you are using both.  

You may find you like to learn about a topic through videos and YouTube, a very popular online video-sharing platform, contains news clips, films, tutorials, commentary and more on many topics and may be a useful starting point, where you also ensure your critical thinking skills are brought to bear. This is because while YouTube can present well-supported ideas and information, it may also include inaccurate or biased information. 

Consult the Books, Journals and More module for more information about these digital media sources and for the PARCA Test which can help you critically evaluate sources.