Seven Steps to Effective Research

Step 2: Find Background Material and Prepare for Research

Consider your topic

Before you begin researching take some time to consider what topic interests you enough that you want to learn about it! Sometimes instructors assign topics for individuals or groups of students to research. Although those topics may not be ones you find personally interesting, rest assured the library has resources to help make the experience as exciting as possible.

To begin you'll need to brainstorm a little before actually consulting any information sources. Make a list of dates, people, events, or concepts that interest you about the topic. The terms from this now become 'key words' keywords for researching your subject. These keywords can be used to consult print resources as well as electronic ones.

Another may to prepare for your research is to phrase your topic in the form of a question then identify keywords relating to it.

Example: What is the effect of teenage pregnancy in high schools?
Keywords:

Find background information in MCC Library Reference Collections

Next consult some general reference sources such as dictionaries, biographies or almanacs to get started on your topic. In using the table of contents, indexes and chapters within these tools you'll probably think of additional words and phrases to help you search for information on your topic. These terms are 'alternate keywords' that help you find more or different sources.

Tip: Alternate keywords are especially helpful when your topic is an assigned one!

Print Reference works are available on the second floor of both Library facilities. For MCC Online students the library provides access to several electronic general reference sources including Encyclopædia Britannica, Oxford English Dictionary, and World Almanac.

As well as general encyclopedias and dictionaries, subject-specific sources can help you choose a topic or narrow one you have already chosen. To find subject-specific sources you may browse the Reference Collection under the Library of Congress call number(s) which relate to your topic. Or, you may use the Library Catalog to see if the library has any reference sources on your topic.


MCC Online students and others connecting remotely can search over 30 subject specific reference sources using the electronic resource Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL). From GVRL's Basic Search page users can access titles such as American Law Yearbook, Child Development, Crime and Punishment, Encyclopedia of Aging, Encyclopedia of Law and Society , etc.

What about Wikipedia? Can I use it? Should I use it? Wikipedia is a wonderful resource for general information on popular and scholarly topics. It is not, however, a scholarly source. That is because as it states on it's About Wikipedia page

"Visitors do not need specialised qualifications to contribute, since their primary role is to write articles that cover existing knowledge; this means that people of all ages and cultural and social backgrounds can write Wikipedia articles. With rare exceptions, articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet, ... ":

As you can see from this page, the library provides many different electronic resources to help you find background information as you learn about scholarly research.

Use a topic-specific bibliography to find more resources.

A number of Research Guides are available in a display cases throughout the library or online as eResearch Guides.

We would appreciate knowing about your experience using this site. Please click here to tell us.

Rev 2/08