Researching Tips

1
Researching Tips

• What to look for in sources
• and how to find them

2
RECENTNESS

• Sources should be RECENT, unless the old age of
  the source is valid for some reason. This can
  matter when writing about an author like James
  Joyce and using his autobiography, The Portrait
  of an Artist as a Young Man. This book cant be
  in a more recent edition since Joyce was the
  author and he is dead.

3
RELEVANCE

• Sources need to be relevant to the topic. Dont
  let a source distract you because of what it
  says, how it says it, or how much material it
  might have. Make sure that the source relates
  directly to your topic and helps you develop your
  thesis.

4
RELIABILITY

• Sources should be reliable. Check the authors
  credentials to see what else he or she has
  written. Bias is a huge concern in writing. If
  you were writing about gun control, an NRA
  article or a Handgun control article would be
  biased sources. For an informative essay on an
  author, AVOID reviews of works written by your
  author.

5
VARIETY

• Your sources should be varied. They should all
  come from different categories listed on the
  research paper handout. Dont use all Internet
  or print sources. Journal articles, written by
  professionals for professionals, are the one
  exception here.

6
BALANCE

• Sources should be balanced in their use in that
  one huge book and several short articles lends
  itself to a book report rather than a true
  synthesis paper, which takes the sources, lets
  them talk to each other, and constructs a new
  work that is better than the sum of the sources.

7
Take Good Notes

• Take bibliographic notes on who wrote the source,
  who published it, where it was published, when it
  was published, etc.
• Take source notes on the content of the article.
  Be sure to use your own words and summarize or
  paraphrase more than quote.
• Make copies of print sources and printouts of
  electronic sources as you go. You will need them
  when you turn in your paper.

8
REMEMBER

• Dont blindly trust .com, .biz, .net and even
  .org web sites.
• Trust .edu and .gov web sites.
• Look for authority, recentness, source and intent
  (from RTL) before you use a source.
• Use the librarys databases rather than a blind
  Google search.
• Ask the librarian or someone in the Writing
  Center for help.