What topic should you pick?

Sometimes topic selection can be a big challenge in the research process.  For this course, you may select any topic you like.  If you don’t have a specific topic in mind already, here are some sources of inspiration:

• Are you doing research in another course? You could use the research topic for that course to complete the LBR 105 assignments – by the end of LBR 105, you will have at least 9 different sources of information to use for your other course.
• Browse through recent newspapers and magazines for hot research topics.  What are your friends and family talking about?
• Look at your own interests – for example, are you interested in music, sports, travel, the environment, or cutting-edge technologies?
• Flip through general encyclopedias, such as the World Book Encyclopedia or Encyclopaedia Britannica.  These encyclopedias are available in most college and public libraries.  NOVA also provides some encyclopedias online.  The two listed below allow you to “Browse” for topics:

  Encyclopaedia Britannica Online
  Oxford Reference Online - World Encyclopedia

 To use these encyclopedias from off campus, log in when prompted with your NovaConnect username and password.

Hopefully you've got a few ideas now for a topic to use for this course. The next step will be to refine your topic so that the scope is appropriate for this course.