Lesson 5:
Evaluating Resources

Objectives

Evaluate Books

Evaluate Articles

Evaluate Web Sites

Select Useful Information

Resources

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Select Useful Information

Select Useful Information

You can avoid dealing with irrelevant sources another way.

Instead of creating a mental or written outline and then looking for research to support the main points you've already decided upon, you could do some research first, before you create your outline. That way, you'll be familiar with the types of quotations and facts that are available in research resources. When it's time to make an outline, you'll already know what main points you can support or refute using your research.

If you approach your assignments using this strategy, you'll need to do some very broad research and become familiar with a body of information before choosing your focused topic. For example, if you're planning to write a causal relationship paper, you may want to read 2 or 3 articles about a problem before deciding on which specific causes of the problem you'll write about.

Conducting a broad search means trying a variety of search terms and using a range of sources to gather information.

Once you’ve found sources on your broad topic and used them to narrow your focus, you need to isolate specific details (facts, statistics, quotations, anecdotes) from your sources to support the main ideas you plan to convey in your assignment.