Consider your experience with research:

Have you done any research projects or written research essays in the past? If so, in what context? What is your experience using the databases provided by the library? What is your experience with academic sources – do you know how to find them? If so, how have you done so in the past? The readings below will help you discern between popular and scholarly sources as you research – you’ll need both for Project 1.

Reading

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/conducting_research/evaluating_sources_of_information/where_to_begin.html (Links to an external site.)

https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/writing/using-sources/principles-citing-sources/scholarly-vs-popular-sources (Links to an external site.)

Conducting research isn’t easy – it takes time and focus. This resource will help you search for sources. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/conducting_research/index.html (Links to an external site.)

Once you have a sense of the types of sources you’ll be looking for, you can get ready to begin researching. This step-by-step overview will help you through the research process.

Prepare to search for sources:

• List key words/phrases you can use in a Google search, or a library database search
• Start with initial research to give you ideas about sources you might find, then proceed
• Finding academic or scholarly sources – use Google Scholar, Databases
• “Hidden” Internet – don’t assume Google search yields best results; popular search engines only account for about 65% of internet content

Gather sources and information:

• Evaluate sources as you go – appropriate, likely to use or not, credible?
• Encyclopedias or Wikipedia are too broad and not usually robust enough to count as a source in a research essay, but they can provide a good starting point to understand something and they might lead to better sources
• Keep a Works Cited list as you go, or at least a list of links so you don’t lose what you find – use MLA or APA or ask your instructor about following another style guide
• Good rule of thumb: find four times the number of sources required, then discard less helpful ones – 75% of what you locate won’t be as helpful as you hoped

Reading for information:

• Annotating – mark up or use margin notes on printed articles or digital text
• Taking Notes – helps you think through the information and organize what’s important
• Using Note Cards – helps you organize later if you want to be able to “shuffle” information
• Idea is to record ideas, bookmark parts you might quote, note questions that arise

Planning your summary:

• Write summaries or identify/highlight sections of information you’ll use from sources
• Find a way to organize your info – index cards are an old-school but successful way to organize; there are online versions too – or find an app like Evernote to help you organize your own way
• Cross-check your information in different sources – are you interpreting and communicating the information accurately?
• Think about how you’ll use more than one source to support each point – several pieces of evidence are used to support a claim or point in a research essay, so be sure you have sources in your summary that you can imagine drawing on for that purpose
• In addition to summarizing, you will quote directly or paraphrase in writing your research essay, so keep your sources handy and keep them bibliographically organized so you can easily return to them for Project 2

Assignment

In a response of 250 words or less, please address the following:

• Have you used library databases before? If so, how much or how many times?
• What is your experience with academic or scholarly sources, if any? In previous research, what kinds of sources did you use or look for?
• What is your plan for finding the sources you will need for this research assignment? How will you find the required academic sources, and how will you get assistance with the research if you need it?
• How easy do you think it will be to find sources on your topic? What are the potential roadblocks you might anticipate?
• What resources are available to you if you need help finding good sources? What steps could you take if you can’t find what you need?
• What are you looking forward to learning about in the research process – either about your topic, or about doing research – what do you hope you will end up knowing more about?