OK, you’ve decided on a good research topic and have begun searching for books and articles on your topic. However, searching the Discovery Tool or library databases may return an overwhelming number of results that you will want to narrow down. One way to do this is by defining your search in terms of publication date. Normally, your search results are sorted by relevance rather than date, but if you click the “SORTED BY” box, you can select the most recently published articles. Also, in the Discovery Tool you have the option to do an advanced search. In an advanced search, you can define a range of years you would like to include or you can even specify a single year if you think that would be most beneficial. Generally, it is good practice to include results from the last 10 years as contemporary work will reflect recent changes in the academic conversation about topic. Depending on the type of project you are doing, primary sources that are much older may also be useful. It all depends on your specific project. If you have any further questions, click the Ask A Librarian button on the homepage for help.