1. Navigating the Library
2. Finding sources for your research paper
3. Formatting your bibliography and footnotes

Remember: Research is a skill that everyone needs to learn and practice!

Every source contains rich clues to other useful sources. It's a treasure map that can lead you to sources you would never find by pure searching. Think of it is giving clues along two axes:

• Foward and backward in time by mining the source's bibliography and by seeing who has cited the source (ask at the Research/IT Desk for help).

• Side to side across the scholarly conversation by collecting key terms, phrases, and names used in the useful source to find other sources that are similar, and by analyzing how participants in the conversation on this topic use evidence, and what kinds of evidence they use.

Think of the paper you're writing as a story that you are narrating. In this story, you want both primary and secondary sources. Your job as a scholar of history is to weave together primary and secondary sources to make a new, coherent argument.

• Primary source = A book, article, picture, letter, document, or other item that was produced in the past. 
• Secondary source = Scholarship that is reflecting back upon and analyzing something that happened in the past.
• Reference source = Books or databases that contain quick facts, short essays, bibliographies, descriptions of trends in scholarship. 
• Database = An organized place this information is stored online.