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Helpful Hints: |
• Choose a citation style before you start researching and record your citations as you go
along—this will make retrieving information and creating a bibliography a lot easier. Be sure to
ask your professors if he/she prefers one style over another. |
• Find out from your professor what types of resources he/she
expects you to use in your research—
scholarly or popular. |
• Create a timeframe for your research and paper writing. If you need to borrow materials from other libraries
(Interlibrary Loan, or ILL) you’ll need to allow at least 7 days for the materials to arrive. |
Step 1: Choose a Topic
- Narrow vs. Broad
- If you begin your research and find that you’re not finding enough information, your
topic may be too narrow.
- If your preliminary research returns and overwhelming amount of information, your topic is
probably too broad.
Step 2: Create your Research Strategy
- When to use Books
- Books are wonderful for finding detailed information about a topic.
- When writing a long research paper, books can often offer more background
and overall information than journal articles can.
- Search terms for locating books can be more general than those you use for
locating articles.
- When to use Periodicals (journals, magazines, newspapers etc.)
- Articles tend to be more current—they can be published daily or weekly and thus
contain much more up-to-date information than books.
- Whereas books contain lots of information about a topic, articles often focus on a certain
aspect of a larger topic. Articles contain very detailed information about narrowed subjects.
- Reference Books
- Reference books, such as encyclopedias, are great sources for primary research.
You can develop a general understanding of and ideas about your topic from the information in
reference books.
- Keep in mind that because many reference books offer brief information about many topics, they are not
suitable to be used as a cited reference sources in your research papers.
- Some reference books can be used as cited sources, an example being subject encyclopedias. Subject
encyclopedias focus on one general subject and featured longer, in-depth pieces and signed articles.
 - Other types of reference books—almanacs, statistical sources, or yearbooks—can offer statistics or facts
that back up or verify information found in other sources. Including this type of reference source can add
authority to your research papers.
- Websites
- Great for both primary and in-depth research.
- In many cases, websites can offer valuable information to support your arguments, but it is
very important to properly evaluate the information offered on the Internet for authority
and accuracy. Visit the Evaluating Websites/Information on the Internet page for more information.
- Dissertations, theses
- Scholarly works published by Master or Doctoral degree students.
- Dissertations and theses always include works cited lists—a bounty of information resources
right there!
- Other sources to consider…
- Bibliographies—longer versions (sometimes annotated) of works cited lists—very comprehensive
collections of additional sources of further information related to your topic.
- Government documents.
- People.
Step 3: Develop your Searching Strategies
- Visit the
Searching Strategies page to learn how to use keywords, phrases, subject headings,
Boolean operators, and truncation to your searching advantage.
Need some additional help designing a research strategy?
Don't hesitate to
Contact Us or
Make an Appointment if you need assistance.
Last revised: July 24, 2007
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