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Last modified 12.4.06
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Social Studies 8 Choosing to Participate Pathfinder
Research Steps
There is no pathfinder with sources for this assignment! You have learned about different aspects of research; now you're on your own (with help from your teacher and librarians, of course) to find the sources you need. This is a guide to the steps you should take when doing your research.
Remember: Write down your sources while doing research! If you forget where you found your information, it will be very hard to find that source again! For a reminder about citations, look in your planner or Creating a Bibliography.
I: Print Sources
- Look up your person in the general encyclopedias (print or online).
- Search for your person in the Dana Hall Library Catalog.
- Search the catalog for broader categories.
- What field is the person in? (medicine, sports, writing...)
- Sometimes people made a difference by showing that members of a minority or disadvantaged group can be successful. Your person is a woman - is she also African-American, Jewish, Latina, disabled...?
- For example, typing "women sports" into the catalog will find (among other things) books about famous female athletes. If your person is an athlete, she might be in one of those books.
- Skim the sections of the shelves where the call numbers start with BC (in Non-Fiction) or REF BC (in Reference). Those are the Biography Collections; you might find a book that's useful to you there.
II: Online Databases and Periodicals
If your person is too recent, she might not be in a book at all. Don't get discouraged; try periodicals! (Even if she is in books, she might be in periodicals, too.)
- Check a database that seems like it might have information about your person (Access Science, American National Bibliography, CQ Historic Documents, Issues & Controversies in American History...).
- Try a periodicals database (EBSCOHost, InfoTrac, SIRS Renaissance, NewsBank, New York Times Online...).
- If you get too many useless results, try searching for your person's name + "biography" (for example, "Aung San Suu Kyi biography").
- If the article you want isn't full-text, see a librarian! We might be able to help you find the article in our library.
III: Websites
- While reading about your person, think about websites that might be helpful. (If she won a Nobel Prize, try the Nobel website. If she works at a university, try that school’s website.)
- If you’ve tried all these things and still need more information, you can Google. You should have used at least two good sources from Step I or II before Googling!
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