Reading for a degree...

I am currently studying Psychology at University and will be starting my final year within the next few weeks. Although I haven't officially made my choices for next year I have already started reading around my key modules as well as some that I believe I will be taking (as long as they are running).

As you can imagine shifting through countless textbooks and journal articles takes up a lot of time; but there are ways in which you can speed things up...

• Using key words in google can be useless for this type of academic research is pointless... google scholar is a good way to begin your searches, it holds thousands of articles from almost every academic journal that currently publishes; another feature I greatly appreciate is that you can limit the time scale of the research, from anytime to what majority of institutes class as current research (4 years old max) to extremely new research (the current year). However I also recommend you become extremely familiar with how your own library online service uses academic journals; it will have a limited number of subscriptions however these will be the ones the university values more... also most university will subscribe if you contact the proper authority within the University as they want the students to get as much information as they need.
• Another method of speeding this up is key words... don't go too narrow or too broad... you must respect that people use different terminology and therefore may not get usable research immediately. I recommend starting with a theory or key researcher and then follow a logical route through the research; expand on a key point in the first key research and find other articles surrounding this. This sounds simple but you will be amazed at how many students take skewed routes and then find it hard to connect the research to their topic which makes writing your essays and assignments that much harder.
• When looking at a title of a research don't expect to know everything about  the research straight away... if its clear that it isn't related to what your looking for don't bother delving deeper, but if it sounds relatively close I recommend reading the abstract. If this provides useful skip to the discussion section which summarises the research as well as making sound conclusions. This way you halve the amount of time reading and you draw the relevant conclusions; however once you start expanding on the research it would be beneficial to spend a little time going over the methodology and stats to evaluate effectively... remember there is no such thing as a perfect piece of research!
• My final point may be the most important... when you find a relevant piece of research make notes... but also SAVE IT!!!!!! The amount of time students spend shifting through the internet trying to find the exact paper is ridiculous; saving the PDF allows you to check exact phrases and your conclusions quickly and efficiently.

Now no matter how many techniques you apply to finding research for your academic experience it is a time consuming task; so I recommend having a bottle of water with you and a healthy snack. I know you want chocolate and crisps... but having something healthy and light stops you from getting tired and drowsy... also water compared to coffee allows you to take in more information without the caffeine in coffee.

good luck to all new students and any students carrying on with their education.