Three Essential Questions Before beginning your research answer the following questions:
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What do I need to know? (formulate and analyze need)
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Where could I go? (identify and appraise likely sources)
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How do I get the information? (trace and locate individual sources)
(Adapted from the British Schools Council)
The Key to Finding Information: The Bibliographic Citation
Finding, reading, and using bibliographic citations will enable you to locate the information you need. You will find these citations in library catalogs, indexes, electronic databases, and the footnotes, endnotes, and bibliographies of books and articles.
Example of a book citation:
Bracken, James K. Reference Works in British and American Literature. Englewood, CO,: Libraries Unlimited, 1990.
Example of a journal article citation:
Crookes, G. (1986). Towards a validated analysis of scientific text structure. Applied Linguistics , 7(1), 57-70.
You will notice that both the citations contain the name of the author, the title of the work, the publisher and the date of publication. The journal article citation contains other information such as the volume [7], the issue number [(1)], and the page numbers [57-70]. You will need all this information to find the article you are looking for.
Scope and Range
It is important to get an overview of your topic and familiarize yourself with the vocabulary of the field as a preliminary part of your research. Use the following types of reference sources to do this:
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General encyclopedias
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Subject encyclopedias
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Subject dictionaries
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Handbooks
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Guides
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Bibliographies
Treatment of the Subject
It is important to understand the difference between scholarly and popular or general interest writing. In most cases, you will want to find scholarly sources for your research. Scholarly sources are:
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Concerned with academic work, especially research
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Always cite sources in the form of footnotes, endnotes and/or bibliographies
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Written by scholars in the language of the discipline
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Usually peer-reviewed or refereed
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Often published by universities or professional associations
Examples of scholarly journals:
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JAMA Journal of the American Medical Association
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Annals of Botany
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Research in African Literatures
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Journal of the History of Ideas
Popular sources:
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Are aimed at a broad audience
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Contain articles which are often short in length
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Usually do not cite sources
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Are written in simple language
Examples of popular sources:
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Sports Illustrated
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TIME
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Ebony
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People Weekly
Evaluating What You Find
All information is not equal. You must evaluate the information you find before using it in your research or writing. This is especially true of information you find on the World Wide Web. Answer the following questions:
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Authority: Who wrote it? What are the author’s credentials?
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Publisher: Who published it? What type of publisher (i.e. university press, commercial press)?
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Content: Does it adequately address my topic? Is it fact or opinion? Well researched?
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Accuracy: Is the information correct?
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Currency: When was it written? What edition? Is it a revision?
(Adapted from The College Student’s Research Companion , 2nd ed. by Arlene Rodda Quaratiello and Library Resources for the First-Year Writing Seminar , Boston College )
