International Development (SAIS)
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Google Tools
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search across scholarly literature. It has limited options for refining searches, but does offer a citation count for many articles. It also provides sample citation formats in multiple styles.
Google Advanced Search allows you to do complex searches. For example, you can find sites in German that were updated in the last 24 hours or use filters to limit your results to a specific web domain such as .edu, .org, or .gov.
Citation Help
Citation Help summarizes core resources that can help you create and/or store citations, organize your research, build bibliographies and footnotes, and more. Your professors will tell you if they prefer a particular citation style. Note the Citing Sources Guide is also a good resource.
Core starting points for SAIS Women Lead projects
The full International Development guide has useful resources for your projects. Take a look at the options to the left for sectors, data, etc. The home page also has added Starting Points.
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Catalyst - the JH Libraries CatalogSearch the Hopkins collections for books, articles, documents, digital media, etc.
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ProQuest All Databases This link opens in a new window90+ databases covering scholarly articles, dissertations, news, and more.
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Gender-focused DatabasesA list of resources with a focus on gender, including library databases and international organization sites.
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Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) Viewpoint This link opens in a new windowAn excellent source for brief, high quality - and very current - country analysis reports. Click on "Geography" to search by country.
Annotated Bibliographies
If your clients expect you to prepare an annotated bibliography, here are some guides. Annotated bibliographies consist of a list of citations, each followed by a brief descriptive / evaluative paragraph (the annotation) informing the reader of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited.
To browse examples of annotated bibliographies published as articles:
Connect to ProQuest Databases
- Enter "annotated bibliography" in search box
- Check the boxes next to "full text" and "scholarly journals"
Connect to JStor
- Under "Item Type", select "Article" (to avoid reviews of book-length annotated bibliographies)
Try similar searches in other databases.
Evaluating Sources (aka The CRAAP Test)
Currency
Consider the date the source was published. Based on what you know of the field and the subject, is it current enough to still provide relevant information? Why or why not?
Relevance
How does this material contribute to your understanding of the problem/topic, or how is it useful to your research?
Authority
Is the material peer reviewed? If not, what makes you trust the information?
How do you know that the author is qualified to write on this topic?
Accuracy
What gaps or inconsistencies do you see in the research?
Do the sources and/or methods used seem reasonable based on the topic, population and setting?
What could have been done to make them stronger?
Purpose
Who/what audience is the article written for?
What, if any, bias can you determine from the research?
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Credit to the Meriam Library at CSU Chico for formulating the CRAAP test (PDF).
- Last Updated: May 16, 2025 9:23 AM
- URL: https://guides.library.jhu.edu/idev
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