Introduction

Genre

Topic

Scope

Introduction

Preliminary research

Refining your topic

Thesis or Question

Research

Outline

First Draft

Revisions

Proofreads

Additional Resources

Writing a Research Paper

Scope

Preliminary research

So you're at the library. First find out where your reference librarian is: your safety net in troubled waters. Great, but what now?

Go to the computer catalog terminal (which may or may not be just an Internet search screen off the library's WWW home page) and enter in some keywords that have to do with your subject. Whether it's "Renaissance Art," "Postcolonalism," "Dung Beetles" or "Hominids" the idea is to get a sense of how many resources are available in your general area, where in the library your topic has been catalogued, and next to what other sections. Get a feel for the connections even if they aren't your own; libraries are more than worthy models of organization!

With that information in hand, now physically go to the appropriate stacks and do some scanning to get a better sense of how your topic is being treated by other scholars. Flip through the pages. Look at headers, bolded and italicized words, captions, figures (or pictures if you should be so lucky!), tables, table of contents, and indices. You may find after scanning a book on Renaissance Art, that you're more interested in Baroque Art. Aren't you glad you found out now??