Find background information
1. Search Discovery for textbooks or encyclopedias that address your topic. View the Discovery tutorial for information on limiting your search to books. These types of resources summarize common general knowledge about your topic. Try broad terms when searching the catalog. Your topic may be just a chapter in a book that discusses a larger subject. For instance, you will find a chapter about tuberculosis in the book Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases.
Phrase your topic as a question
Example: What advantages does interferon-gamma release assay have over the tuberculin skin test in detecting tuberculosis?
In this case, you have gone from a general idea (tuberculosis testing) to a specific question about the efficacy of a new method of diagnosis versus a more established one. Since these specific questions are the kind researchers try to address, it's likely that you will find studies that will help answer your question.
At the end of this step you should: