BASICS OF THE RESEARCH PROCESS
STEP 1: CREATE A WORKABLE TOPIC. An easy way to do this is to develop a topic in the form of a question. This tends to reduce the scope of your research. Size matters. If your topic is too big, you won't be able to adequately handle it. See a page of sample paper topics if you are having difficulty.

STEP 2: FIND INFORMATION. Use the electronic card catalog for locating books in the LMC. Use one of our databases for locating magazine articles, eBooks, or another quality reference source. You may want to supplement your information with material found on the Web.

STEP 3: EVALUATE YOUR INFORMATION SOURCES. Realize that authors often present one side of an issue or purposely limit information in order to advance their arguments. This is often the case with websites. Generally speaking, books and magazine and journal articles tend to have the most trust-worthy information. Before books and journal articles get printed they are reviewed by professional editors. This is not the case with web pages. Consequently, internet content is sometimes extremely poor and must always be assessed for usefulness. Here's one site which can help in evaluating web site reliability.

STEP 4: CITE YOUR SOURCES USING THE MLA STYLE GUIDE. All writers must cite their sources. In other words, as you write your paper you must give original authors credit for ideas and phrasing. If you were to portray their ideas or phrasing as your own, you would be committing academic dishonesty. It would be plagiarism. NRHS uses the Modern Language Association Style Guide for citing sources. In order to help you correctly site your sources, the LMC subscribes to NoodleTools. You have a username and password. You should be using NoodleTools to create and store your citations.