What we all love finiding and citing....sources!

As you begin gathering and evaluating sources for your research argument, you need to keep in mind three things to keep you on track with your topic. These three things include the topic, the conversation, and the research context. One way of visualizing the relationship between the process and the product of research is through the metaphor of the iceberg of research. This means that your topic or your final paper will be only one small part of your research. Sources help you gather all of your data to build the structure of your paper. Books, journal articles, websites, surveys, historical materials, interviews, and multimedia are all sources that you can use to find information on your topic. Locating relevant and interesting sources to draw into your conversation involves finding the best search terms to use. These keywords are important when searching for information. Primary sources are original texts you analyze in your research paper that can be found in many places. Primary sources may include original documents, rare books and manuscripts, portfolios of photographs, government docuements, or any other one-of-a-kind texts. Secondary sources are texts that provide commentary on your topic and often analyze the texts you have chosen as primary sources. You can find secondary sources by looking through dictionaries, encyclopedias, guides, library catalogs, CD-Rom indexes and bibliographies, electronic journals and ebooks, or google books. A preliminary bibliography is a working list of the sources for your iceberg of research. You need to make sure you evaluate the website you are getting your information from, so that you are sure it is a valid website with valid information. Make sure to look at the author, the audience, the purpose, the links to other websites, how easy it is to navigate on the website, the date on the site, and if somebody is maintaining the website. You need to make sure the information is true and the author is credible.