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Anticipate the general research locations where you expect to
gather facts.
Now that Beth had limited her theme to factors that
caused the South to go to war, she knew that she had to target her
research to a relatively limited time in history. She expected that her
main work would involve library books, journal articles and other
historical sources that dealt with the twenty to thirty years before the
Civil War broke out.
As a kind of action plan, she included some notes on her recall pattern
to identify major information sources. These included “school library”;
“local public library”; “Mr. Jones’s private records” (Mr. Jones, a friend
of her family, was a Civil War buff); and “Civil War archives” (there was
a special library and archive on the Civil War period near her home).
At the outset, seek to develop your own opinions.
Every good paper
includes the author’s opinions about the subject under discussion. At this
point, Beth hadn’t come to any final conclusions about the reasons why
the South went to war. But she had developed a few preliminary
opinions from her class reading and lecture notes, which she recorded on
her recall pattern. For example, she believed that Southerners’
philosophical commitment to slavery was less important than the
economic pressures they feared if they lost a source of cheap labor.
As you can see, the first steps in writing a good paper are quite similar
to the initial purpose-setting and overview phases of efficient study and
reading. Having a clear-cut viewpoint in mind will always make the
student’s life easier—and usually produce significantly better grades.
Stage 2: Identify Specific Research Materials
Using the Multiple Reading Process, you should begin to examine
relevant research materials at the various libraries and information
locations that you’ve identified. At this point, don’t try to complete all
your research. Instead, conduct an overview of the books, articles and
other materials that are available. You may also want to do some
selective previewing of especially important books and articles, though
actual reading should be postponed until later.
(In some cases, such as when there are severe restrictions on access to
a library or other sources, you may have to go in and do all your
research there on your first visit. But if possible, it’s best first to get an
overall idea of the quality of the materials available in different places.
Then, you can go back and examine the most important information in
more depth on a second visit or later visits.)
Here are some suggested steps to help you in identifying your sources.
First, arm yourself with appropriate materials. Buy some 3-x-5-inch
cards to record the references you find. Also, you should carry a couple
of larger pads for making more extensive recall patterns. And of course,
don’t forget to take at least two or three pens or pencils, in case the one
you’re using breaks or runs out of ink.
Second, develop a list of possible resources. Don’t be afraid to use your
imagination. Also, check with librarians in charge of centers of
information. They are usually highly trained in the way their library
materials are organized, and they can often provide the student with
advice about reader’s guides, bibliographies and other sources.
Third, overview every book you find that seems relevant to your topic.
Fourth, if you think you’ll use a particular book or article for your
paper, record on your index cards all the essential information that
you’ll need for footnotes and bibliographical references.
You should learn
before
you begin your research what format your
teacher requires for documentation so that you can get it all on paper at
this stage. There’s nothing more frustrating than to finish a paper and
find you have to wade back through all your sources in various libraries
simply because you forgot to note the publication date or some other
essential element. In general, you’ll need to record the full title, the
author, the pages pertinent to the topic, the publisher and the date and
place of publication.
Fifth, after overviewing the sources, begin to draw recall patterns.
It may be possible to put a recall pattern on the index cards for
sources that are of relatively limited value or contain only a small
amount of information. For more important sources, however, you’ll
probably have to use a larger sheet of paper for the recall pattern. If you
do formulate a recall pattern on a second sheet at this point, be sure to
copy the documentation information onto the recall pattern so that
you’ll have it handy later for inserting footnotes.
Sixth, in some cases, you may also want to preview some especially
important books or articles at this preliminary stage. If you do, fill out
your recall pattern further with the additional information you gather.
Seventh, as you take these preliminary notes and record your
documentation, identify and note on your cards the sections of books
and articles that you want to read in more detail later.
Eighth, limit the time you spend in this source-identification phase of
your research! For a paper the length of the one that Beth had to write—
about 5,000 words—one or at the most two days was plenty of time to
devote to this preliminary stage.
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