Research

Print Sources Almanacs

Have current facts and statistics Atlases

Maps, population stats, geography, and climate Dictionaries

Pronunciation, definition, etymology (word origins), spelling, parts of speech (n, adv, adj, etc.)

Encyclopedia General interest articles on a wide variety of topics written by

experts. Good for background information/starting point in research. Specialized reference works

Specialized references in every field, from chemistry, to English, to sports

Indexes Alphabetical lists of information, usually subjects, authors, and titles

Electronic Sources: Online sources Print periodicals or scholarly journals

published online. Informational websites—sites ending

with .edu, .gov, .org tend to be more reliable than .com (commercial or business) websites.

Electronic databases allow you to search a wide variety of sources and journals.

Electronic news media—articles, interviews, etc.

Other electronic sources Documentaries, news reports, or other film

media Podcasts Audio (an interview done on the radio, for

example)

What would be the best research tool or reference to use to find:

The year John Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for literature?

a. National Newspaper Index

b. encyclopedia

c. Search engine

d. Book on famous authors

Recent photos taken of the surface of Mars?

a. Science website, like NASA.gov

b. Encyclopedia

c. Online card catalogue

d. Newspaper article on space•The elevations of

regions within the Arctic Circle?a. Newspaper databaseb. Almanacc. Reader’s Guide to

Periodical Literatured. Atlas

•The total gold production in Russia for 2005?a. Russian government

home pageb. Almanacc. Science databased. Encyclopedia article on

mining

Evaluating and interpreting online sourcesWhat you can tell by what’s after the dot.

.com Commercial; might be helpful but probably biased because they are usually selling or promoting something

.edu Associated with an educational institution; usually fairly reliable, but they might be less so if they are from an individual student or something like an elementary classroom.

.gov Official site belonging to the federal, state, or local government; likely to be reliable and objective with wide-ranging information

.net Can be purchased by anyone (like .com)

.org Vernally used by nonprofit organizations; may be reliable—especially if devoted to some scholarly endeavor (like a museum), but can often be biased

Additional information Dates: look for when the site was last

updated, often found on bottom left or right corner.

Sponsor: who funds the site and controls the content? Often pretty straightforward.

Sponsor: There it is! That was easy

Menus: note the organization (it might be something you can “steal” for your paper)

Date updated = Important for citations!

Website sponsor

STEP 1: choose your topic This means that you will have to limit yourself—

narrow it down in some way. A research paper on “Hockey” would be incredibly vague or incredibly long. We don’t want either of those. Choose something like a specific team or player or history or how the game has changed.

Face it, you can’t cover everything! Narrowing your topic is often done while you are

starting your research—general searches, reading encyclopedia entries—when you start to get an idea of what interests you and what information is out there.

STEP 2: Research! Take notes on your sources. Write the name,

author, URL, and other important information for citations and the information you gain from that source.

As you find out more, you might have to go back to step 1 for a bit to refine your area of focus.

Example notes

http://www.nps.gov/appa/index.htm

-2,181 miles-completed in 1937

STEP 3: Organize Once you have a pile of notes regarding your

topic, think of how you might organize all this information. Chronologically? Geographically? By Source? Step-by-step? Compare/contrast? It depends on your topic, information, and preferences.

STEP 4: Write If you have done the other steps thoroughly, this

one should be a breeze. Intro paragraph: includes your thesis—your main

point; give an overview of your main ideas Follow your organizational pattern—each main

idea should get a paragraph. Make sure to note when you are using a fact you need to cite and where it is from.

Conclusion: summarize what you have said, draw conclusions (get it, conclusion?)

Step 5: Format and edit Make sure you give credit to your sources!

If it is a specific piece of information, cite it. The AT is 2187 miles long.

If it is common knowledge, you don’t need to. The AT is over 2000 miles long.

In-text citations (we’ll talk more about this later) Works Cited page: a list of your sources in MLA

format (also, more on this later) Read your paper over and check for spelling,

grammar, organization.

Citations http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/74

7/02/ OWL (online writing lab) at Purdue = very

helpful resource for formatting and citing for research papers!