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Introduction
"The Research
Paper": These very words strike fear into every college student's
heart, but honestly they shouldn't. Fear comes from the unknown; so let's
get to the known: clear strategies, ready help at hand online, and
step-by-step approaches.
We will then go into
more detail about finding information. Following that, in a section on
searching the Internet, we provide links to a variety of search tools and
analyses of search tools.
The last two sections
cover evaluation of Internet sources and documentation of
sources. |
Getting Started
Clear Strategies
First, use Colorado State University's
Doing
Research to discover clear, easy to use research strategies, including
topic selection and narrowing, and finding and evaluating sources such as
books, articles, web sites. While reference to CSU's SAGE Library Catalog
are institution-specific, you can apply the search approach techniques to
your own or any college library catalog.
Online Help
To get actual Research Paper workshop
info and handouts, go to OWL
Online Writing Lab and type in <research paper> for your search.
Scroll through the several hundred very useful links to any which fill
your need, especially those on taking notes, paraphrasing, quoting and
documenting sources. You might want to keep Purdue's OWL in the background
while you work on your paper.
Step-by-Step
Approaches
Internet Public
Library's A+ Research
and Writing and
InfoSearch offer
steps to writing the research paper, from getting a topic to the final
draft. While some of this info repeats research strategies already
reviewed at CSU's "Doing Research," you will find the very clear logical
steps here very encouraging. |
Top of Page
Finding Information
Books, Journal
Articles
For most research papers
which do not have immediately current topics, you first want to search
your college's online catalog and subscribed databases for books and
articles on your topic. Use CSU's Doing
Research pages to assist in this.
Internet Sources
With internet access and searches so readily available, who wouldn't want to immediately begin all research on the internet? Try a few searches and you will see all the garbage, the non-related, etc. all mixed in with what might be some worthwhile results. What to do? Try a good tutorial from New Mexico State University Library: The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly, or Why It's a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources . Pay particular attention to Criteria and Examples . It will definitely be worth your while. |