Organizing Your Online Research

December 12th, 2008 by theProfessor
theProfessor

What have others said? As you conduct preliminary research in the library, you will find books and articles on your topic. As you read the material, try to form an idea of what the major issues have been in the discussions about your topic. For example, if your topic is on how stem cells could treat Lou Gehrig’s Disease, you will need to have an idea of who the first people who started researching the topic. You will also need to identify the sides of the argument. Who is for it? Who is against it? Why? What are the issues? Once you have a sense of the main players, you can start to do searches based on author name as well as key words or topics. Ironically, in some cases, you may even have to be aware that the site may not have the original version of the information you’re citing. They may, in actuality, be borrowing from another site. This is particularly the case with Web sites and services that subscribe to Weblogs or where the information is mirrored because they have chosen to pull the entire article in the feed.

Organize your sources, articles, and notes. After you have found your articles, be sure to organize them so that you have a sense of where they will go in your online class paper. Keep your primary thesis in mind, and the points you are trying to make and will support with evidence and research findings from your articles. This is a good time to return to your outline and to start mapping out where you plan to use your sources and citations.

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