Once you have chosen a topic from Dr. Adkins's list and have her approval for that topic, the next step for you to take is to generate keywords. Keywords are the search terms that you will use to find information about your topic. This video explains how to compose keywords from your topic.
Take your time to carefully develop keywords for your research topic. Your research will be easier if you do so. Write them down.
It is now time to look for in-depth sources of information about your topic. For this purpose, we will use the library's databases. Have you used the library's databases before? If not, then I suggest watching this brief video tutorial before you proceed.
Credo Reference is a database of reference books. It's a great place to begin many research tasks because the brief, concise articles in this database can teach you about your research topic before you explore more complex and detailed information sources about your topic. You can also use the articles in Credo Reference as sources of information for your research paper. The above video shows you how to search it.
Look down for a link to the database.
Another database that you should search is Academic Search Complete, which is a database of newspaper, magazine, and scholarly journal articles on many different subjects. The video above shows you how to search it. Look down for a link to the database.
Search the database US Major Dailies to find newspaper articles published within the past three years about your topic.
We have two excellent ebook databases. These let you read full-text books online. The interfaces can be confusing, so I have included a tutorial video for each one.
The video above shows you how to search the ebook database titled EBSCO eBook Collection.
The video above shows you how to search the database ProQuest EBook Central.
This is our video that introduces APA documentation. I urge you to watch the entire video carefully before starting to write your paper or annotated bibliography. It is much easier to cite correctly as you go along, rather than try to fix your documentation after you have written your paper. This is our complete APA guide, which goes into more detail about citing sources and formatting correctly.
It includes our sample paper. When you're writing a paper, you can model the formatting of your paper after this one. If you are unsure how to set up the formatting in Microsoft Word so that it fits the requirements for APA formatting, you could instead download this blank Word document that has the formatting already set up for you.
