Evaluate Your Sources!
Remember to always evaluate all your sources! You want to make sure you are picking high quality, credible sources. Reviewing your sources using the C.A.A.R.P. guidelines will help you evaluate the currency, authority, accuracy, relevance, and purpose of the information you find.
Text Version of C.A.A.R.P. Test
Read over your assignment. Do you understand what you need to do? Having a clear understanding of your task will help you develop a successful plan to get it done.
See if you can answer the following questions:
Sometimes one of the hardest things about getting started is just figuring out what you are going to write about.
If you have to come up with your own topic there are lots of places that you can get ideas from:
Once you have a general topic in mind, you will need to figure out what aspect of that topic you want to focus on. For example, affordable housing is a very broad topic. How might you be able to focus this topic? What about affordable housing are you interested in (for example, specific policies and/or programs, impacts or influence of certain events or factors, etc.)?
The library has access to many different newspapers, news databases, and general reference databases. Some of the library databases offer the option to browse issues. These databases can be helpful for exploring possible topic ideas and gathering background information to help you come up with a focused research topic.
If you have questions about whether a specific topic/research question is acceptable for your assignment, check your assignment instructions and/or check with your instructor.
Identify the main ideas of your topic and the key words used to describe these ideas. After you identify your key concepts, see if you can think of any other related words that might be used to talk about these same ideas.
Example:
How does gentrification impact the mental health of residents in the affected communities?
Keywords:
Related words:
As you start searching and find information on your topic, you may come across additional words that would be useful for your search. Different words will pull different results. As you work your way through the searching process, revise your search strategy and search again as needed.
Remember to check your assignment to know what types of sources you can use. For example, do they need to be peer-reviewed? Are you looking for primary sources? Do they need to be published within a certain period of time (the last 5 years, the last 10 years, etc.)? Knowing what types of sources you are looking for can help guide your decisions about where and how to search for them.
Databases offer different options for limiting or filtering your results. You may have the option to limit your results to peer-reviewed journals or by the type of source or document. You usually have an option to limit by publication date (and/or you may be able to change how your results are sorted to have the more current information show first).
Credo Reference provides full-text online versions of over 3,500 published reference works from more than 100 publishers in a variety of major subjects, including general and subject dictionaries as well as encyclopedias. (link opens in a new tab)
These are just a few of the available titles. Search the library catalog to find more.
If you have not yet decided on a topic or just want to explore the issues, you may find the databases listed below particularly helpful. Each of these databases offer options for Browsing the Issues, so you don't necessarily have to have a topic in mind yet. Instead, browse through the listed issues to find topics that interest you.
(database links open in a new tab)
Consists of a collection of viewpoint articles, topic overviews, government and organizational statistics, and an assortment of multimedia clips from academic journals, magazines, and other types of publications.
Global Issues In Context supports global awareness and provides a global perspective while tying together a wealth of authoritative content, empowering learners to critically analyze and understand the most important issues of the modern world. Integrating news, global viewpoints, reference materials, country information, primary source documents, videos, statistics, and more in a single search‚ Global Issues In Context is updated daily and offers 250 different country topic pages and more than 400 Issue pages. Exclusive to Global Issues In Context, Global Issues Viewpoints contains more than 3,000 exclusive commentaries that provide background and guidance on significant topics.
These are just a few of the resources available to you. Check the Databases by Subject list to find more.