Quick Quiz - Research Strategy (Engl 1102)

The Research Paper Planner mentioned here is a scheduling tool. Planning the paper is part of YOUR job, although you can get tips from this guide, your professor, and the Learning and Tutoring Center. And a notebook to write down search terms and sources is great idea!

Books/ebooks (or chapters inside) and scholarly journal articles are your best bets for scholarly articles about literature. You might find reviews or interviews with the author in magazines and newspapers, but these are not considers scholarly sources. Websites vary in quality, but it is often difficult to find scholarly literary sources on the open web.

The title of the work, the author's last name, and the main theme of my paper are the most important keywords, connected with AND. (You can leave "AND" out if Boolean operators are not required). You do not want to enter a phrase like, "The character named Daisy in The Great Gatsby." Connecting with OR will give you far too many irrelevant results!

Scholarly journal articles are written for scholars, meaning they have a background in the topic. If you are new to the topic, it might be good to read some more general sources, such as your textbook, encyclopedias, or popular magazines to get a general understanding of the topic, then go on to read more scholarly sources.

"OR gets you more!" Daisy OR Gatsby gets you the most results, but more isn't necessarily better. You want your results to be relevant and high-quality, too. With OR, you will get a lot of irrelevant results if you're talking about the character Daisy. This search will also turn up information about Daisy the flower, among other Daisies. Daisy NOT Gatsby will get you information about Daisy that is not associated with Gatsby -- probably mostly about flowers. Daisy AND Gatsby will be most likely to get you information about the character named Daisy in The Great Gatsby. For more information, watch this video: http://youtu.be/glrH_1rTTq4