Now that you have chosen a topic and found some sources, I would like you to submit an outline of your paper. At this point it should be a very basic outline made up of information for your introduct

Some things to help you with your paper

How to find sources for your paper

Finding sources for a paper may seem to be a daunting task.  Where do I start, and how do I know if a sources is a good one?  Hopefully, these hints will help you to find sources that are reputable and useful.

1. Choose a topic.  I know this sounds very basic, but you need to know what you are looking for before you start looking.  Try going through your textbook and see if anything jumps out at you.  If all else fails, send me a message and we can try to come up with something together.  I truly do not care what topic you choose, as long as it falls within the time and location parameters of the class.

2. Try the UTPB library website: http://library.utpb.edu/ (Links to an external site.) This site has links to the card catalog to help you find books on your topic, and also a link to the online databases that you have access to as a student here.  Just type your topic into the search engine, and see what you get.  Moreover, you can always physically go to the library, or your local public library, and talk to a librarian for help; they will happily point you in the right direction.

3. If you find a book or article you want to use, mine it for more sources.  Look at the end: scholarly books and articles will always have a Works Cited, often divided into primary and secondary sources, and you can often find a wealth of new sources to check out there.

4. UTPB subscribes to many academic databases, and some of them are for historical documents, not just recent materials.  For example, you could check out the "American Periodical Series (Links to an external site.)" database.  (You will need to use your UTPB credentials to sign in, if you're off-campus.)

5. Google Scholar can be very useful.  Here's how to use it.

6. Try the website of a major newspaper that was publishing when your event happened.  Yes, some of their archives you have to pay for, but some you do not, and newspapers are a great primary source.  You can even just Google "X time period newspaper full-text", or "X topic newspaper 1800-1865 full-text", and see what you get.

7. If all else fails, try just doing a web search for your topic in a major search engine like Yahoo or Google.  If the web site address ends in .edu then most likely it is from a college or university and should be a reputable sources.  But, you can always ask me to check the source for you, just send me a message.  Beware any website that does not have an author’s name or any citations about where the information used to create the site came from.  Anyone can put up a website: it does not mean that what they put on their site is true or correct!

8. Remember, you need 2 primary and 2 secondary sources at least.  Primary sources are sources that were written at the time of the event or sources that were written somewhat later by an eye witness or participant in the event.  These kinds of sources include newspapers, letters, diaries, after action reports, TV or radio news broadcasts, or autobiographies.  Secondary sources are anything written after the event by someone who was not there.  Secondary sources include books written by historians, biographies, and journal articles from historical publications.  If you need more information on the difference between primary and secondary sources, check out: the "What Are Primary and Secondary Sources?" page.

And, as always, if you get stuck, send me a message and ask me!

How to take notes for a term paper

Taking notes from a book, article, or website is something that most of your will have to do throughout your professional career.  So, now is the perfect time to learn how.  At this point you should have picked a topic and found some sources that you believe will be useful to you in writing your paper.  Follow these steps to research and take notes from your sources.

1. Now that you have narrowed down your topic (and if you need help with that just send me a message and I can help you), you need to do some research.  Read the sources that you found and take notes about the topic that you decided to write on.  There are many different ways to take notes and I am going to suggest one here, but use what works for you.

2. One option is to use a notecard based system.  Below you will see a sample of the a research notecard.  Each card has the last name of the author, the title of the source, and the page number at the top of the card.  The body of the card has my note on it, and the bottom of the card has a general topic.  This way, I know where each note came from which makes writing my citations much easier and, with each note on a separate card, I can more easily organize my notes into an order that makes sense for how I am going to write my paper.

I have also used notebook paper.  If you have many notes to take from one source, it can be more efficient to write the author/title once, and then a list of page numbers and the information there.

As I said, this is just one way of going about this process, but, if you have never written or researched a paper like this, it gives you a starting point to get your work done!