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Select a Topic
Outline Your Paper
Types of Resources
Organizing your Research
Writing Essays and Research Papers
Citing Sources and Doing Bibliographies

Select a Topic

• Select a topic that interest you
• Do a quick review of the literature search to see if there is enough information about your topic. (textbooks, library catlaogues, reputable internet etc.)

Selecting a Topic
from the State University of New York, Binghamton, New York.

Best Information on the Net - Hot Paper Topics
from O'Keefe Libraray St. Ambrose University

The Essay - Narrowing Your Topic
from the University of Victoria

Planning: Thought Starters (Asking the right questions)
from the OWL (Online Writing Lab), Purdue University

Outline Your Paper

Now that you have a topic selected, there are many aspects of it that you can talk about. However, you need to determine what areas you are going to deal with specifically.

Concept Mapping is a great way of organizing ideas to show relationships between things. Many people use this method for taking class notes as well as organizing their papers. Below are some sites that describe and show examples of what concept mapping is:

Here is a visual example of a Concept Map : Water Supply and Quality

Mind Mapping
Provides several modules on all aspects of mind mapping from the Academic Support Division of James Cook University.

Concept- or Mind Mapping
A step-by-step guide on doing a mind map from the University of St Thomas.

Concept Maps
This sites gives a good explanation of what concept maps are as well as links to examples of their different types.

Types of Resources

There are many resource types available to you as a researcher - not all are equally good for all topics. For every topic there is a key resource, make sure you are consulting the best resources for your topic.

Primary Versus Secondary Resources - What is the Difference?
A description of what primary and secondary resources are from Bowling Green State University.

Organizing Your Research

Write down every possible search term for your topic and make sure that you understand all aspects of it.

You may want to :

• Look it up in a general encyclopedia (check the Learning Resource Centre or online)
  
• Read a major article on the topic
  Use the Library of Congress Subject Headings (in the Learning Resource Centre) to find possible subjects to check under for books
  
• Determine the information requirements for your topic. For example:
  
  • Is currency an issue?
  • Do you need information from a particular type of publication? (ex. scholarly publications or popular magazines)
  • Do you need to use primary sources? (ex. diaries, interviews, letters or raw data.)
    is the point of view an issue?
  • How much information do you need?
    
• Use Boolean Logic to combine your terms into search statements: ex. "cigarette smoking" AND asthma
  
• Record your research
  
• Make a research plan
  
• Keep track of the resources which you have found. Record all the bibliographic information as well as the source. This will save you a lot of time later on.
  

Writing Essays and Research Papers

Writing Essays
A series of short handouts on writing different types of essays from the University of St. Thomas' ISS-Learning Center

Guide to Writing a Basic Essay

A+ Research and Writing
An excellent step by step guide to choosing a topic, doing the research and writing the paper from the Internet Public Library.

The New Guide to Writing Research Papers
From Monroe Community College, this site covers the whole process from finding information, evaluating it and citing it. Their evaluation checklist is very useful for doing that final check before you submit your paper.

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