You have just been given an assignment and you come to the library to begin the project. Where to begin? Why not try using the following outline to complete your project.
Steps in research
You have a question you need to research, or your teacher assigned you to research. Where to begin? This is probably the hardest part of the task, but not to worry; library staff and faculty are here to help you. Asking the right questions is the fastest way to get to the heart of the matter.
1. Identify topic
First of all, consider the assignment: are you writing a paper? giving a speech? doing a complete presentation? Are you expected to show that you understand a topic in detail or are you supposed to show that you can present an argument clearly? Who is your audience? All of these things will affect how you approach your research. Once you've given some thought to the nature of the assignment, find a topic (or aspect of the topic) which interests you.
What is the question you need to answer/find info for?(forming the question is often the most critical part of the research)
Now that you have determined what you are doing and how extensive your research needs to be, you can more to the next set of questions.
2. What do you know?
What do you want to know? What do you need to know? In fact, if this is a topic you are interested in, you may already know quite a bit, but you will probably need to do some more research for this assignment. So, where do you go to do your research?
3. What are the best sources for YOUR topic?
Best means: Fastest, Easiest and Most Accurate A good beginning place is often an encyclopedia—either general or specialized. You might want to consider books on the topic or check the vertical file. In the long run, books are often the most accurate source for in-depth information. Books are usually reviewed by colleagues and offer a better way of getting the big picture. This is not to deny the value of other sources. All of your sources need to be evaluated. See both Selecting Search Terms and Evaluating Sources for more information for web searches.
4. How do you evaluate the sources?
Questions you need to ask yourself:
- When was it copyrighted/updated? Is that important for this work?
- Is it accurate? Is the author or publisher a reliable source?
- Who is the author?
- Is the material factual?Objective?Or is a point being made?
- If it is from the Web there are other questions to ask, what is the domain--.edu, .com, .org, .gov
- Is the material easy to get to? Is it free?Is it understandable/well-organized? Does it require special technology?
- Are there active links that are up to date?
5. When using the internet
it is important to use the Boolean operators, they will help focus the search
- And—both or all terms are necessary
- Or—either term will do
- Not—this but not that.
- If you want a specific multi-word term, put it in quotes“college writing”
6. Write your paper or prepare your presentation.
Your teacher will give you the best guidance for how the paper or presentation is to be prepared. The library has a number of sources that will help including:
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association Ref 808.066 AME
MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing Ref 808.027 GIB
You might also try the following web sites:
or other web sites found under WRITING in the Subject Resources section
And finally
7. Make Sure You Note The Sources Of All Materials
otherwise neither you nor your teacher nor the library staff will be happy folks. There are penalties for copying/plagiarizing and I am not sure anyone wants to deal with those. With web sources note not only the URL but also the date you found the material.
8. And now that you are finished, what did you learn?
Did you follow the directions given?
What could I have done differently?
How can I improve on my next project?
Am I satisfied I did my best?
The search terms you enter and the order in which you enter them affect both the order and pages that appear in your search results. In the examples below, click on the similar ways of specifying various searches and note how the results differ.For simplicity sake, this tutorial uses square brackets to denote the search box. For example, to search for a cheap hotel in Mykonos, I’ll put the words “cheap,” “hotel,” and “Mykonos” in square brackets, [cheap hotel Mykonos], to indicate you should type those three words in the search box. You should not type the brackets. You might want to try using these three words in different order to see how the results vary.
1.Use Likely Word
Use words likely to appear on the pages you want.
Avoid using a question as a query. For example, the query, [
Does Australia have Target], instructs the search engine to find pages containing all the terms. Such a query won’t necessarily find pages answering your question. A better query might be [
Australia Target store].
When most search engines detect very common words such as
where,
do,
I,
for, and
a, known as
stop words, it ignores them. If you’re seeking pages that include a stop word, e.g., “how the west was won,” use quotation marks around the phrase.
Avoid using words that you might associate with your topic, but you wouldn’t expect to find on the designated page(s). For example, queries that include “articles about,” “discussion of,” “documentation on,” and “pages about” are likely to return fewer results since information on the web is rarely labeled with such terms.
Suppose you want to know how old someone is, such as Nelson Mandela (the former President of South Africa). Pages with “birthday” or “age” might be more than a year old. Searching for pages that include “Nelson Mandela” and “born” are likely to include either “Nelson Mandela born” or “Nelson Mandela was born” followed by his birth date. You can figure out his age from knowing when he was born.
2.Be Specific
Be specific: Use more query terms to narrow your results.
It’s better to use a more precise, less ambiguous term than a common one to “flesh out the topic by including facets that interest you,” notes Ned Fielden in his book Internet Research, Second Edition (McFarland & Company, 2001).
Does your query have enough specific information for the search engine to determine unambiguously what you’re seeking? If your query is too vague, it’s unlikely to return relevant results. Consider, for example, the query [
java]. What do you suppose Google includes in the first page of results? An island in Indonesia? A beverage consisting of an infusion of ground coffee beans? A computer network-oriented platform-independent programming language developed by Sun Microsystems?
How can you come up with more specific search terms? What do you know about the topic? Consider answers to the questions, “who?”, “what?”, “where?”, “when?”, “why?”, and “how?”
When you search for [
Tom Watson], on the first page of results you may get references to a member of Parliament, the golfer, the IBM executive, and a Populist Party candidate for President in 1900 and 1904. If you’re searching for something that could return many different types of results, you should add a term that distinguishes among them. This way you’ll get only results about the specific Tom Watson you’re interested in.
3.Brevity
Be brief.
For best results, use a few precise words. For example, a program on quitting smoking is more likely to include the terms “quit smoking program” than the words “program on quitting tobacco cigarette smoking addiction.”
4.Spelling
You don’t have to correct your spelling.
There’s a good chance that the search engine will recognize your mistakes and suggest an alternative more common spelling, usually faster than you can look up the term in an online dictionary.
Note: Before clicking on the suggested spelling, consider whether it’s what you want. Spelling checkers, like people, make mistakes.
Google’s web-page-ranking system,
PageRank, tends to give priority to better respected and trusted information. Well-respected sites link to other well-respected sites. Consequently, more accurate pages are typically listed before sites that include unreliable and erroneous material.
Nevertheless, evaluate carefully whatever you find on the web since anyone can: Create pages
Exchange ideas
Copy, falsify, or omit information intentionally or accidentally
Many people publish pages to get you to buy something or accept a point of view. It’s up to you to cultivate the habit of healthy skepticism. When evaluating the credibility of a page, consider the following
AAOCC (Authority, Accuracy, Objectivity, Currency, Coverage) criteria and questions, which are adapted from
www.lib.berkeley.edu/ENGI/eval_criteria.html
Authority
· Who are the authors? Are they qualified? Are they credible?
· With whom are they affiliated? Do their affiliations affect their credibility?
· Who is the publisher? What is the publisher’s reputation?
Accuracy
· Is the information accurate? Is it reliable and error-free?
· Are the interpretations and implications reasonable?
· Is there evidence to support conclusions? Is the evidence verifiable?
· Do the authors properly list their sources, references or citations with dates, page numbers or web addresses, etc.?
Objectivity
· What is the purpose? What do the authors want to accomplish?
· Does this purpose affect the presentation?
· Is there an implicit or explicit bias?
· Is the information fact, opinion, spoof, or satirical?
Currency
; Is the information current? Is it still valid?
· When was the site last updated?
· Is the site well-maintained? Are there any broken links?
Coverage
· Is the information relevant to your topic and assignment?
· What is the intended audience?
· Is the material presented at an appropriate level?
· Is the information complete? Is it unique?
how to evaluate the veracity of pages you view.
For a printable form with most of the questions that you will propably want to ask, visit:
If you’re unable to view PDF files, you can get a free PDF viewer from Adobe by visiting
For more information on evaluating what you find, visit
