Strong, research-driven writing requires developed research skills and access to the appropriate resources. To make the most of your research process, read through the guidelines concerning consulting, evaluating, and implementing primary sources provided here. You can also begin your research by utilizing one of the online research databases listed on this page.

 

Library Research

Stanford University's Library system is among the best in the world, and as a Stanford student, you have access not only to some of the most comprehensive collections available, but to primary documents and archives. You may find that the time you spend exploring Stanford's libraries and archives is among the best investments you can make here. To begin your explorations, try taking the Online Tour of Green Library.

Stanford Library's reference site on Beginning Library Research will help guide you to some of the most important information resources on your chosen topic through the How Do I Find? page and the Research Quick Start Guides page. These pages can be helpful when using Socrates, Stanford's Web-based Catalog.

Evaluating Resources

Cornell University's Library Gateway has developed an on-line guide to evaluating resources; two of their most useful sites include Critically Analyzing Information Sources and Distinguishing Scholarly From Non-Scholarly Periodicals: A Checklist of Criteria.

Avoiding Plagiarism

When you take notes on your reading in preparation for your own writing, be certain to avoid unintentional plagiarism.

The following resources provide excellent suggestions for developing active reading practices that enable you to avoid plagiarism while making the most of your reading and research process. Duke University's Guide to Library Research includes a comprehensive discussion of plagiarism within the academic community, in their chapter on Plagiarism: Its Nature and Consequences. The University of Toronto's guide on How Not to Plagiarize is structured in a question and answer format, and addresses some common student concerns about the technicalities of citing sources to avoid plagiarizing. Georgetown University Honor Council answers some of the finer points of their question What is Plagiarism, paying special attention to complex issues such as fair use, paraphrasing, collaboration, and using information from the internet.

 

Web Resources: Using Primary Sources

• What is a Primary Source? What materials constitute primary sources? Yale University Library's Primary Sources Resource Page has helpful answers to these fundamental research questions as well as links to their own primary source collections for research in history.
• UC Berkeley also has a user-friendly guide to Library Research Using Primary Sources in which you'll find definitions of primary sources, tips for getting started, and detailed search strategies.

Web Resources: Online Research Collections

• Primary Sources on the Web, an annotated list of research collections on the web, is a terrific place for you to start the research process itself. Maintained by UC Berkeley, the page provides descriptions and web links to digital collections of primary sources from a wide range of disciplines.
• Another excellent list of primary source documents on the web, organized by discipline and prefaced with a brief guide to Internet Research strategies, can be found at the Internet Research Starting Tools webpage hosted by OWL: The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University. Be sure to explore the many links on this comprehensive site, including the multi-layered aide to tackling Research Papers and Jessie Moore's Tips for Using Search Engines on the World Wide Web.
• ERIC, the Educational Resources Information Center in Bloomington, Indiana, is a good source for abstracts and full-text articles in education.
• Alcove 9, An Annotated List of Reference Websites, Humanities and Social Sciences Division, is a collection of annotated links compliled by the Library of Congress on a variety of topics.
• The Chronicle of Higher Education maintains a useful list of interdisciplinary resources available onine.

Web Resources: Getting Started

• Before you begin using these resources, you might want to read through the Checklist of Internet Research Tips, by Laura Cohen at the University of Albany Library. There's also a very thorough guide to Conducting Research on the Internet, also by Laura Cohen, that leads you through the steps: Getting Started, Searching (with links to the better search engines for academic writing), and Formulating Queries.

Web Resources: Documentation

• The Columbia Guide to Online Style is one of the most comprehensive guides available for documenting electronic resources, online information, and data gleaned from software. You can also refer to UC Berkeley Library's Style Sheets for Citing Internet & Electronic Resources.

Web Resources: Evaluation

• How to evaluate online resources. Follow this link for help in evaluating web sources as part of your research process.