Managing Sources in Microsoft Word

By the time you start writing your research paper, you've probably collected most of your sources. If you're typing in Microsoft Word 2007 or Word 2010, you can organize and manage your various sources easily.

Before you get too entrenched in your writing, you should enter all of your source information into your "manage sources" section of Word. To do this, you simply select the References tab which is located at the top of the page. Then select the style (MLA, for example).

You'll see Manage Sources on the menu. Select that, and then select New. You will be prompted to input all the information (title, author, publishing company) for one source. When you're done with each source, select OK. Continue adding your sources until you've entered them all.

Once you've entered your sources, you will be able to insert in-text citations, footnotes, and bibliography entries with one click!

View the original article here

Finding Research Sources

You’ve selected a great topic and you’ve found two fabulous sources. Research is going well, and then suddenly you hit a brick wall. You discover that the resources you’ve found seem to be the only ones available on your topic.

But your teacher requires five sources! What now?

Every researcher has faced this problem: the moment when the research suddenly runs dry. This is a serious problem if you are required to use a certain number of sources for a paper. Sometimes it just doesn’t seem possible!

Finding Additional Resources

The first thing to do when your research seems to dry up is to check the bibliographies of the books you already have. Sometimes bibliographies are like gold mines of information.

You will probably discover that some of the sources used in the books are scholarly articles. Don’t be dismayed! Many articles are available online, and you may be able to find a specific article by doing a detailed Internet search.

Simply type the entire title of the article into a search engine and put quotations marks around the title. The search will either lead you to that article or it will direct you to another source (article) that quotes your original article. The other source might be just as helpful.

If you find a great article in a bibliography and it’s not available online, you can still get it with a little effort. Just go to a public library and show it to your librarian. If it’s not available on site, the librarian will probably be able to order it from another library.

Your article will be sent through the mail and should be available within a few days. This is just one more reason why it’s important to start your research early!

If That Didn’t Work

Sometimes that approach isn’t feasible. Some sources, such as autobiographies and encyclopedias, don’t have bibliographies.

These are times when it may be necessary to get a little creative. There are a few occasions when you simply cannot find specific books or articles on your topic. Time for some lateral thinking!

Lateral thinking involves shifting your thinking pattern from the logical, sequential pattern to a pattern that shifts focus onto something less predictable. It’s simple, really.

For instance, if you are working on the biography of a not-so-famous person (which often leads to a limited number of sources), then you may need to abandon the typical step-by-step biography approach and focus on some relevant part of the person’s life in more detail.

If your person was a doctor or midwife in Victorian American, you could delve briefly into one of these topics:

• Early medical tools
• Sanitation issues
• Misconceptions
• The daily life of a typical doctor/midwife in Victorian America

If you devote a paragraph or section to one of these topics, you will find that numerous sources are available. If you decide to do this, make sure the topic fits into your thesis and doesn’t jump outside the parameters defined by your thesis sentence.

But what if you’re working on a paper for science class? The same technique will work. For instance, if your paper concerns a rare South American bug and you discover late in the game that there are only two books in the entire world that discuss this bug, you could devote a few paragraphs to “a bug’s life.”

Seriously! You could identify the predator of the bug and write a few paragraphs about the tactics the bug uses to avoid his predator. Or—you could focus on an environmental factor that affects the bug and write about the struggles the bug faces when he encounters these factors. Then one of your sources could concern the environmental factor (or the predator) and not concern the bug specifically.

View the original article here

Bad Sources

In conducting homework research, you are basically conducting a search for facts: little tidbits of truth that you will assemble and arrange in an organized fashion. Your first responsibility as a researcher is to understand the difference between fact and fiction—and also the difference between fact and opinion.

Here are some common places to find opinions and works of fiction that can be disguised as facts.

1. Blogs

As you know, anybody can publish a blog on the Internet. This poses an obvious problem with using a blog as a research source, as there is no way to know the credentials of many bloggers or to get an understanding of the writer’s level of expertise.

Many people create blogs to give themselves a forum to express their views and opinions.

2. Personal Web Sites

A web page is much like a blog when it comes to being an unreliable research source. Web pages are created by the public, so you have to be very careful when choosing them as sources. It's sometimes difficult to determine which web sites are created by experts and professionals on a given topic.

If you think about it, using information from a personal web page is just like stopping a perfect stranger on the street and collecting information from him or her. Not very reliable!

3. Wiki Sites

Wiki web sites can be very informative, but they can also be untrustworthy. Wiki sites allow groups of people to add and edit the information contained on the pages. You can imagine how a wiki source could contain unreliable information!

The question that always arises when it comes to homework and research is whether it’s OK to use Wikipedia as a source of information. Wikipedia is a great site with a lot of fantastic information, and a possible exception to the rule. Your teacher can tell you for certain if you can use this source. One thing is for certain: Wikipedia offers a reliable overview of a topic to give you a strong foundation to start with. It also provides a list of resources where you can continue your own research.

4. Movies

Don’t laugh. Teachers, librarians, and college professors will all tell you that students often believe things the they’ve seen in movies. Whatever you do, don’t use a movie as a research source! Movies about historical events can contain kernels of truth, but they are created for entertainment, not for educational purposes.

5. Historical Novels

Students also believe that historical novels are trustworthy, because they state that they are “based on facts.” There is a difference between a factual work and a work that is based on facts!

A novel that is based on a single fact can still contain ninety-nine percent fiction! Never use a historical novel as a history resource.

View the original article here

Can't Find Sources?

You've selected a great topic and you've found two fabulous sources. Research is going well, and then suddenly you hit a brick wall. You discover that the resources you've found seem to be the only ones available on your topic.

But your teacher requires five sources! What now?

There are a few steps you can take before you take the drastic step of changing your topic at a late date. Find out how to locate additional sources after the well runs dry, by using some tricks that professional researchers use.

More Resources

• Writing a Research Paper
• Using Note Cards
• First Things to Consider

View the original article here

Trustworthy Sources

Research is conducted to get at the truth of a subject. As simple as that sounds, you will soon learn that the truth is often very difficult to find!

As a researcher, you will find that every question can have many possible answers and every event will be described differently by witnesses, partly because events are clouded by opinions and viewpoints. You can see evidence of this if you browse through your television news programming.

Look through your news shows and you will find programs with names like "Reliable Sources" and TV channels who make claims to be "Fair and Balanced or "The Most Trusted Name in News." You will also see that any two news organizations will report the very same event in two very different ways.

So where do you find the truth?

You have to develop a critical eye and ferret out the facts for yourself!

A person who has developed critical thinking skills will be able to discern facts from opinions and pick up on small clues that help to determine trustworthiness of sources.

Can You Trust the Source?

It can be helpful to put the topic of trustworthy sources into perspective with an exercise.

Imagine that you are walking down a neighborhood street and you come upon a disturbing scene. A man is lying on the ground with a leg wound and several paramedics and police officers are buzzing around him. A small spectator crowd has gathered, so you approach one of the bystanders to ask what happened.

"This guy was jogging down the street and a big dog came running out and attacked him."

You take a few steps and approach a woman. You ask her what happened.

"This man was trying to rob that house and a dog bit him."

Now you don't know what to believe!

Two different people have given different accounts of an event. To get closer to the truth, you have to find out if either person is connected to the event in any way. You soon discover that the man is a friend of the bite victim. You also realize that the woman is the dog's owner. Now what do you believe? It's probably time to find a third source of information-and one who is not a stakeholder in this scene.

What Is a Stakeholder?

In the scene described above, both the man and the woman providing the reports have a big stake in the outcome of this event. If the police determine that an innocent jogger was attacked by a dog, the dog's owner is subject to fines and further legal trouble.

If the police determine that the apparent jogger was actually involved in illegal and dangerous pursuits at the time he was bitten, the wounded man faces penalty--and the woman is off the hook.

If you were a news reporter, you would have to determine whom to trust by digging deeper and making an assessment about every source of information. You would have to collect details and determine if your many sources were trustworthy, or if they were clouded by distortion. And distortion can stem from many causes:

• Stakeholders' ambitions
• Preconceived beliefs
• Political designs
• Prejudice
• Sloppy research

So What Is a Reliable Source?

It is nearly impossible, after an event has occurred, to determine the exactness of every detail. Every recounting of an event involves points of view and opinion to some degree. The best sources will provide a consensus view and identify all information providers. The following statements should help you determine the trustworthiness of your sources:

• Every writer, lecturer, reporter, and teacher has an opinion.
• 
  
• The most reliable sources are straightforward about how and why they are reporting.
• 
  
• An Internet article that provides news but does not provide a list of sources is not very trustworthy. (The article you are reading supplies advice as opposed to news.)
• 
  
• Anybody can publish on the Internet.
• 
  
• Internet publishers can be dishonest about their identity.
• 
  
• An Internet article that provides a list of sources for a newsy article is more trustworthy.
• 
  
• An Internet article that is published by a reputable research organization or a respected professor at a reputable university and provides sources is even more trustworthy.
• 
  
• Any source is more trustworthy if the author and the publisher are easily identifiable and it is clear that the author and the publisher are not driven by profit.
• 
  
• Books are generally considered more trustworthy than the Internet because books are stable and unchanging. An online article can be edited at any given moment, while a book is published as a whole at a specific, identifiable time and date.
• 
  
• Books are generally considered more trustworthy because the author and publisher are clearly stated and they are held responsible. When a book publisher publishes a book, that publisher takes responsibility for its truthfulness.
• 
  
• News organizations are businesses.
• 
  
• Cable news, radio shows, and other media sources must make a profit. If you use these as sources, you must consider their many stakeholders and political slants.
• 
  
• Fiction is made up-so fiction is not a good source of information.
• 
  
• Movies are fiction. Even movies based on real events are fiction.
• 
  
• Memoirs and autobiographies are nonfiction-but they contain a single person's point of view and opinions. If you use an autobiography as a source, you must acknowledge that the information is one-sided!
• 
  
• A nonfiction book that provides a bibliography of sources is more trustworthy than a book that does not.
• 
  
• A book published by a profit-making company has a stake in the success and the popularity of the book. This profit-making potential can cause a book to be more scandalous and more sensational--and less truthful.
• 
  
• An article that is published in a scholarly journal is usually scrutinized for accuracy by the publisher. A publisher-especially a university press--has a reputation to protect.
• 
  
• Some sources are "peer reviewed." These books and articles go before a panel of non-stakeholding professionals for review and assessment. This body of professionals act as a small jury to determine truthfulness. Peer-reviewed articles are very trustworthy.
• 
  

Scholarly research is a quest for truth. Your job as a researcher is to use the most trustworthy sources to find the most accurate information. Your job also involves using a variety of sources, to reduce the chances that you are relying on tainted, opinion-filled evidence.

View the original article here

Primary Sources

Have you ever read a diary? If so, you have already consulted a primary source. This type of source is a valuable tool to get the researcher as close to the original thoughts or events as possible.

If you really want to make your research project stand out, it’s a good idea to take the necessary time to find a good primary source that reflects something relevant to your topic.

Most primary sources are unpublished materials, although they don’t have to be. A letter, memoir, or even some government records are all examples.

Several libraries have “special collections” or archives where they keep just such records. But sometimes, you don’t have to go that far. Primary sources can also show up in your grandmother’s attic!

Here’s an example of a primary source that would make your research project zing. Imagine that you’re doing a research paper on “Women in the Vietnam War.” Do you have a relative who served? If so, you may find a diary or letter in your family collections that reflect the feelings of women who went—or even those who stayed at home, worrying about a loved one.

That letter would make a great contribution to your paper! But you don’t have to worry if your family didn’t write things down. If you know someone who had a relevant experience, you can interview that person. The interview would be considered as a relevant source, sometimes called an oral history.

No matter what topic you choose, you’ll improve your paper with diverse sources. A first-hand account from your elders would likely enhance your paper and your grade!

View the original article here

Reliable Sources

Students don't always realize that research sources that are considered perfectly acceptable one year may not be so acceptable the next year! This happens because teachers expect research skills to improve a little bit each year.

One improvement is the sophistication level of the sources. Encyclopedias, web sites, and magazines are good examples of sources that are acceptable for beginning researchers. Once students progress into high school and beyond, however, things change!

Through high school and college, popular magazines may become off-limits as sources. The reliability of information varies very much from one to another, and magazine writers don't often list their sources. That's a problem for advanced researchers, since it is important for good researchers to be able to track down the origins of their information.

Teachers will expect students to be very selective about the web sites they use, as well. There are certain clues to look for to determine the reliability of a web site.

And at a certain level, teachers will also begin to expect students to venture way beyond encyclopedias as sources. Instead, instructors will often suggest that student use encyclopedias as background reading. For mature students, encyclopedias are great for gaining a solid foundation before the serious research begins.

View the original article here