Your best bet when beginning a new research paper is to start general and then get more specific as you have more background information on your topic.

For a 5-10 page paper your topic and research question will need to be more specific than you might think! A good rule is that if a whole book has been written on your topic, then you should get more specific.

If you would like help on finding resources within a specific discipline, go to:

Find answers to common questions, discover solutions to common problems, and more!

Reference works (encyclopedias, bibliographies, dictionaries) can help you get background information on your topic. Try these reference databases:

• Credo Reference

• Gale Virtual Reference Library

• Oxford Reference​​

As you find material on your topic, keep a list of terms and keywords. These keywords will be helpful to use when you need to find scholarly resources. You may also need to consider alternate terms or synonyms.

Try using a worksheet to keep track of terms, like this one:

Start your research by searching for books in the library catalog. Use your terms and keywords found in reference sources to search for books.

Pro-tip: Once you have found at least ONE relevant book in the library catalog, look at the linked subjects in the catalog record. When you click a linked subject, the library catalog will retrieve all the other books on that same topic.

Go to the next page (Find Books) to get specific advice on using the library catalog to find books.