1. Research and critical evaluation Follow the seven steps of research, but be flexible! Step one : define your research question Step two : ask for help Step three : develop a research strategy and locate resources Step four : use effective search techniques Step five : read critically, synthesize, and seek meaning Step six : understand the scholarly communication process and cite sources Step seven : critically evaluate sources 2. Finding books and ebooks Books and scholarly research Use books as a shortcut Use a subject encyclopedia to start your research Use bibliographies and Web guides to locate key resources Use reference books to locate quick factual information Find reference books Use scholarly books for a broad and deep overview Use ebooks for research Do not read the entire book Don't use books if ... Use filtering devices to deal with information overload Critically evaluate books 3. Scholarly and popular articles Identify and use scholarly journal articles Use magazine and newspaper articles when appropriate Choose databases to search for articles Develop effective search strategies Locate articles Use open access journals, preprint servers, and institutional repositories/university Web sites Evaluate articles Understand the role of informal information sources : personal Web pages, blogs, and wikis 4. Primary sources : online tools and digitized collections What are primary sources? Understand the types of primary sources Plan your research strategy Find digitized primary source collections on the Web Find primary sources using the online library catalog Visit your special collections department Find historical newspaper and magazine articles Use special microform collections of primary sources Critically evaluate primary sources
Find critical essays and brief factual information
Find published autobiographies and biographies
Find biographical writings by lesser-known individuals
Critically evaluate autobiographies and biographies
Critically evaluate diaries
Critically evaluate oral histories
Validate biographical writings using secondary sources
Use biographical Web sites with caution
Critically evaluate biographical Web sites
Find primary and secondary legal resources
Use secondary sources to find related cases and analysis on points of law
Understand citations to court cases
Use a legal dictionary to decipher legal terms
Find lower federal court cases
Determine whether a case is still "good law"
Critically evaluate legal resources
7. United States government documents and statistics
Find federal agency documents
Find presidential information sources
Find legislative information
Find government documents from other countries and resources from intergovernmental organizations
Critically evaluate government documents
Critically evaluate statistics
8. Citing sources, avoiding plagiarism, and organizing references
Develop a system for taking notes
Steer clear of all types of plagiarism
Choose a documentation style
Use the following examples form the Chicago Manual of Style to format your references
Use bibliographic software to cite your sources
Bring evaluation into the process
Appendix. Specialized journal article databases : indexes and full text
