Topic and Bibliography Instructions
The first step in a research project is identifying what you are interested in knowing more about and narrowing your curiosity to a specific topic. The next step is doing a review of the literature, to discover what is available on that topic. Sometimes, there's a wealth of current information; sometimes there is very little. Sometimes, there is information, but you, the researcher, can't figure out how to find it, or it is so technical that you can't readily use it.
Consequently, doing a search and constructing a bibliography is an important early step in doing research. Before you commit to a major effort, see what is available, and whether you want to pursue it. Why annotate the bibliography? The annotations will be useful to you as a researcher; they will help you to keep track of the contents, nature and the quality of the materials you have located.
This is an Internet exercise, so stick to authoritative materials that you can find on the Internet. I do not want a list of books from the local library.
1. Make a bookmark for this page, so that you can easily return after doing your search. If you are using Internet Explorer as your browser, you can do this by selecting "Favorites" from the top menu bar, and then selecting "Add..." Once you've done that, you will be able to return here by looking on your Favorites list for the item that ends in "Bibliography.html." Print out this page to keep the directions handy while you search.
Some key words work very well; others do not. You may need to experiment with different related words until you find some that lead you to the material you are looking for. Problems can occur in two directions:
1,300,000 hits--there's no way you can look at all of them. Solution: add more descriptive words to your search term;
no hits--you probably need to use different key words in your search instructions or more general terms. |
If you have several key words that belong together, try putting the group of words in quotation marks. This can improve your search results. For example, if I wanted to find out about Elizabeth Taylor in her role of Cleopatra, I might try this entry: "Elizabeth Taylor Cleopatra film." If I wanted to find articles on effects of daycare, I might try this entry: "Daycare behavior outcomes." If one set of terms does not bring you any results, try others, until you start getting what you need.
In order to annotate an item, you must first read it, so concentrate on articles that you can actually read and print out. Articles need to be both recent and substantial, so do not include any article in your bibliography that is briefer than 2 full print pages or 4 screens in length, or more than five years old.
**The goal is to gather a range of ideas and opinions, so do not include more than two articles by the same person, or more than two articles from the same web site or publication or publisher.
Each search engine goes through somewhat different sources, using different methods, so each comes up with somewhat different results. Consequently, you should try more than one search engine as you gather your articles. Go to the Resources page of this course for links to several good search engines.
There are many other ways to find information, whether on the Internet or in your local library. Use any that are available.
Gather at least ten relevant articles on your topic. Do not select web sites instead of articles, although you may find and use good articles that are posted on a web site.
NOTE: a bibliography is a list of books, articles, etc. that are about a certain topic; a list of works cited, or reference list at the end of a report only includes items that you have actually used in the report, either by quoting or paraphrasing.
Each bibliographical entry for an Internet item must include:
author (if there is one) |
title of the document, in quotation marks |
title of complete work (if applicable) in italics or all capital letters [A book or journal title is underlined on paper, but not on the WWW, because it would look like a hotlink.] |
date of publication or last revision |
URL in [square brackets], because angle brackets make the information within them disappear on the web. |
date of
your access (in parentheses) |
Write an annotation for each item in your bibliography. This should be enough to give a sense of what the article is about, and what value, if any, it has for your project. You will need to read each article before you can annotate it, so stick to material that you can get, whether online or in the library. Please do not include articles that you consider of no value for your project.
Briefly evaluate each article. Do you think it is reliable? Does it come from a professional source? Is the web site that posted it of a high quality? Is the author well qualified? Is the information presented supported by facts and studies? Will the article be useful for your research report? Go to Evaluating Internet Resources to see an excellent list of items to think about when evaluating a web site.
Arrange your bibliography list alphabetically by author, last name first. If an article does not have an author, you may list it under the first word of its title. Or, you can list it in the A's under "anon." If you have several anon's, you then would list them under the first words of the titles. Note that I am using italics instead of underlines for the titles of books or journals. That is because underlines are reserved for hotlinks on the WWW. You could use ALL CAPITALS for book and journal titles, instead of italics, if you prefer.
If you have selected your topic wisely, and located appropriate sources, you should now have a beginning bibliography for your research project, or you may now know that your original idea won't work well as a research project, and you will need turn to something else. As you develop ideas for your paper, you will find that you need more sources on particular issues. Add these to your working bibliography as you locate them; some of them will become part of your final list of works cited.
(c) Diane Thompson:12/3/1998; updated: 03/24/2007