Steps in the Research Process

These steps outline a simple and effective strategy for finding information for a research paper and documenting the sources you find. Depending on your topic and your familiarity with library resources, you can adapt this outline to suit your needs. Each step below is followed by a brief summary. For more explanation as well as [...]

Read Full Post »

7 Tips for Writing a Great Research Paper

We’re right in the middle of mid-terms and writing projects, so you might find this article of interest.  Lynn Jacobs and Jeremy Hyman, writing for U.S. News and World Report, have compiled an excellent list of 7 Tips for writing a great research paper. Two highlights of the article are using the Library’s interlibrary loan [...]

Read Full Post »

How College Students Seek Information

Project Information Literacy released Lessons Learned: How College Students Seek Information in the Digital Age December 1, with findings from its large-scale student survey administered on six different U.S. campuses during Spring 2009. The study found that nearly all students used course readings and Google first for course-related research, and Google and Wikipedia for everyday [...]

Read Full Post »

Academic Research – Painful Process for Students

As reported on the ACRL Blog, there is a 2009 report that gives first-hand accounts from students about how they move through the research process. One significant finding is that no matter what resources students have at their disposal or how much time they have…research seems to be more difficult to conduct in the digital [...]

Read Full Post »

Using the Internet for Research

While library resources are extremely valuable for any academic research project, sometimes it helps to use the Internet as a starting point in your search for information. In this Summer 2009 article, Paul Gil provides links to information about the best search engines (beyond Google), and the  best general reference sites. He also provides a wealth of [...]

Read Full Post »

Why Evaluate Websites?

The answer to almost any question is available within seconds, courtesy of the invention that has altered how we discover knowledge – the search engine.  The real difficulty kicks in when you click down into your search results. At that point, it’s up to you to sort the accurate bits from the misinfo, disinfo, spam, [...]

Read Full Post »