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Your Essential Guide to Starting Research Assignments Effectively

Struggling to begin your research assignment? This step-by-step guide will help you break down the process, from analyzing your assignment requirements to identifying key resources and keywords for effective searching. Learn how to clarify your topic into a focused question, gather background information, and evaluate the resources you need. Don't hesitate to reach out to librarians for assistance as they offer valuable support and expertise for your academic tasks. Get started today and conquer your research challenges!

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Your Essential Guide to Starting Research Assignments Effectively

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  1. Where To Start? Guide Have an assignment due? Don’t know where to start? Feeling information overload? Click your mouse or use spacebar to advance presentation

  2. 1. Analyze the assignment. What have you been asked to research, explain, uncover? • Example topic: uses of fungicides in preventing Sphaeropsis blight among pine trees • The topic asks about the uses/implications of fungicides not the history of the blight Still not sure what the assignment is asking? • Try turning the topic into a question and setting limits. • What has been the impact of using fungicides to prevent the spread of Sphaeropsis blight among pine trees?

  3. 2. Focus on the assignment topic and start asking the following: • Do I need to limit the scope to a particular region, state, or time frame? • Do I need a minimum number of examples? • Does my instructor require different resources? If so, how many and what types? • Do I need current or older information? • What is my timeline? Is this due tomorrow? Is it due next week? At the end of the semester?

  4. 3. Identify keywords that you can use for searching the library catalog, databases, and the internet. Try some of the following tricks to identify keywords: • synonyms ( Home – house, estate, residence, dwelling) • spelling variations (theater, theatre) • root word variations (education, educate, educator) • acronyms(World Health Organization, WHO) • regional/historic/scientific variations (American Chestnut or Castanea dentate) • broader/narrower terms (Soda – beverage industry, carbonated beverages)

  5. 4. Collect background information on your topic. Try some quick searches using: • Subject searches in the library catalog • Encyclopedias • Dictionaries • Almanacs • For Dummies or The Idiot’s Guide books (depending on your topic) • Wikipedia (purely for background info, not for direct quotes)

  6. 5. Finalize the type of resources you need and how many. • Do I need books, articles, images, videos, or statistics? • Do they need to be scholarly, popular, scientific, or opinion? • Typical rule-of-thumb is 1 resource for each page in length. (Example: a 5-page paper should have at least 5 resources)

  7. 6. Evaluate your resources. • Do these resources help answer my research question? • Are they too old, too new, not scholarly enough? • Use the “Evaluating Your Resources” Guide to find out!

  8. 7. Ask your Friendly Librarians. • We have skills, information, resources, and random trivia you never knew existed! • library@haywood.edu • (828) 627-4550 • Bill Kinyon • Director, Library and Learning Resources • Heather Gillette • Librarian

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