Step 2 - Find sources and research tools
Step 3 - Search for articles and books
Step 4 - Evaluate your sources
If you haven’t yet decided what topic you want to research and write about, start with a simple topic search on the internet.
Add your area of study to the phrase “research topics in” and read through the results.
For example: research topics in history or research topics in economics
Once you decide on a topic, express your topic or research question in a sentence. This will help you narrow down some key words for your search strategy.
For example:
I want information on the political significance of the Franco-Prussian War.
I need to know about the market for hockey sticks in Canada.
I want to compare communism with democracy.
Figuring out the right size of topic can be a challenge – you don’t want it so big that you’ll need to write a book to cover it, and you don’t want it so focused that no information is available. A quick look at a reference source like an encyclopedia (Wikipedia is ok!) can help you get an idea of how big a topic is. EBSCO’s Research Starters which can be found using OneSearch are also a great resource for this.
*** Remember that your instructor is your best resource for checking that your topic is appropriate! ***
Once you have your topic narrowed down its time to find some sources and research tools to search for information.
OneSearch on CMTN library’s front page is your best option for searching many sources from many disciplines. If you are searching from home you'll have to log in first. [Click here for login help]
The library curates research guides on many topics and specific courses. Check to see if your course has a research guide!
You can also try browsing through all the different databases the library subscribes to.
Having a research strategy can help you approach your research in an organized way. In step 1 you wrote out your research question. Identify keywords from your research question:
Example: “I want information on the political significance of the Franco-Prussian War.”
Keywords: “Franco-Prussian War”, “political significance”, "politics"
Find more keywords using reference sources:
The research starter on the Franco-Prussian War mentions that this war contributed to the political unification of Germany. “German unification” and “Germany unification” are keywords we can try.
The Wikipedia page for Franco-Prussian War lists Otto Von Bismarck as a major political figure involved in the conflict, so we can try adding “Otto Von Bismarck” as a keyword.
Armed with our list of keywords we can now do some searching using the resources identified in Step 2.
Some of the phrases I’d search for this research question are:
“Franco-Prussian War” <- start very broad and if there are lots of results start narrowing your search with additional keywords.
“Franco-Prussian War” AND “political significance”
“Franco-Prussian War” AND “politics”
“Franco-Prussian War” AND “German unification”
“Franco-Prussian War” AND “Germany”
“Franco-Prussian War” AND “Otto Von Bismarck”
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Example:
Both methods can retrieve good results, but if you are looking for keywords in a specific order using "" will return better results. |
Requesting books and other ILL resources
If you find resources that are not available in full-text through CMTN you can make an interlibrary loan request and our librarians will borrow the resource for you. You can do this by filling out an ILL request or by clicking the “request” link from within OneSearch / EBSCO. (See picture below for an example)
It is important when doing research to use sources that are reputable and if possible peer-reviewed. Use the CRAAP method to help you identify credible sources for your work.
CMTN library has guides to help you use many of the major citation styles in your work:
We also have a [Writing Help] guide that explores many of the different types of writing assignments you may encounter as a student at CMTN.
Plagiarism
Avoid plagiarism by working through this plagiarism checklist once you've completed an assignment. If you need advice on citation or plagiarism don't hesitate to ask a librarian!
For additional information on plagiarism and how to avoid it, check out these resources from Jenny Mao, one of CMTN's Learning Transformation Specialists.
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