Getting Started: Information Research Tips

Getting started with a research paper can be daunting. Here are some helpful hints.

1. Understand your assignment
2. Think about the resources that will be most useful for your topic.
3. Look at the other tabs in this guide to help you find books or articles on your topic.
4. Ask for help—either in-person at a reference desk, by Zoom, by email, or by phone.

The Web contains multitudes of information, with one search yielding thousands of results.  It is necessary to evaluate each site in order to know how authoritative it is.

See the Citing Sources Research Guide Section on Avoiding Plagiarism for more information.