Guide to Library Research
Find & Develop a Topic
Identify your topic:
- Discuss your topic ideas with your class instructor.
- Discuss your topic ideas with a librarian. It may be wise to set
up a research consultation, if your project is lengthy.
- Look over the index and the article titles in a specialized encyclopedia
that covers the subject area or discipline of your topic (for example,
sociology, United States social history, women's studies, etc.).
- State your topic as a question. For example, if you are interested
in finding out about use of alcoholic beverages by college students,
you might pose the question, "What effect does use of alcoholic
beverages have on the health of college students?"
- Identify the main concepts or keywords in your question. In this case
they are alcoholic beverages, health, and college students.
Test your topic:
- Test the main concepts or keywords in your topic by looking them up
in the appropriate background sources or by using them as search terms
in the McCain Library Catalog and in periodical indexes.
- If you are finding too much information and too many sources, narrow
your topic by using the "and" operator: beer and health and
college students, for example.
- Finding too little information may indicate that you need to broaden
your topic. For example, look for information on students, rather than
college students. Link synonymous search terms with "or":
alcoholic beverages or beer or wine or liquor. Using truncation with
search terms also broadens the search and increases the number of items
you find. For example, alcoholic beverage? and student? (this will search
for the terms beverage or beverages and student or students).
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