Writing Skills # 3 - Research

Research in preparation for
writing an essay

Develop your time line
Allow for editing, revision and unexpected developments

• Inspiration phase:
  This is continuous to prevent losing ideas and inspirations
  Keep a convenient place to preserve phrases, vocabulary, events, etc. for later use
• Research phase; information gathering and recording: See below
• Organizing/prewriting phasewith concept mapping, outlining, even brainstorming
  Determine how you will build the scenes of your argument, narrative, story, etc.

Research phase; information gathering and recording:
Document all interviews, readings, experiments, data, websites, reports, etc.
People: instructor, teaching assistant, research librarian, tutor, subject matter experts, professionals

1. Develop research strategies and a list of resources
2. Narrow your topic and its description;
   Pull out key words and categories
   Develop a list of key words--50 or so--that form the foundation of both your research and writing. Build the list from general sources and overviews
3. Bring your topic and keyword list
   to a local research librarian, teacher, support professional on resources available
   Text books (!), reference works, web sites, journals, diaries, professional reports
4. International conventions of copyright govern the use
   and reproduction of all material: all information should be properly cited
   

What are some resources?

• Search engines
  
  
• Directories and portals on the Internet that categorize/organize information and links
  
  
• Web sites devoted to particular topics, including text, graphics, movies, music files
  
  
• Government documents, forms, laws, policies, etc.
  
  
• Services and information by
  non-profit organizations and by for-profit businesses
• LISTSERVs or discussion groups
  
  
• Resources at your local (public) library
  These may require membership or registration
• Newspaper, journal, magazine databases
  Often restricted to subscribers, require registration, or can be fee-based for access

Using an Internet search engine:
Find the best combination of key words to locate information you need;
Enter these in the search engine

• Refer to known, recommended, expert, or reviewed web sites
• Review the number of options returned.
  If there are too many web sites, add more keywords.
  If there are too few options, narrow/delete some keywords,
  or substitute other key words
• Review the first pages returned:
  If these are not helpful, review your key words for a better description
• Use advanced search options in search engines:
  Search options include
  • Key word combinations, including Boolean strings
  • Locations where key words are found
    For example: in the title, 1st paragraphs, coded metadata
  • Languages to search in
  • Sites containing media files (images, videos, MP3/music, ActiveX, JAVA, etc.)
  • Dates web sites were created or updated
• Research using several search engines
  Each search engine has a different database of web sites it searches
  Some "Meta-Search" engines actually search other search engines!
  If one search engine returns few web sites, another may return many!
• Evaluate the content of the web sites you've found:
  Beware referencing blogs as they are basically opinions and not "fact"
• Track your search:
  List resources you checked; the date your checked them
  Identify the resource, especially its location and the date you found it
  c.f. index card system
• When printing, set your options to print the
  Title of the page | the Web address | the date printed