Start Researching
You've done some necessary pre-research work in the previous steps and now it's time to find sources. The "Search Basics" video below provides instruction on how to search for books and other resources in the Baylor University Libraries.
There are two other factors you will want to consider:
- is the kind of information I want already available? Information takes time to be written and published, so look at the brief video on the Information Timeline before you begin searching, especially if you are writing about something recently in the news.
- Keeping good records of the sources you've used. The box below, Keeping Track of Your Resources, introduces two citation management programs suitable for college-level research .
Good luck with your research, and please don't hesitate to contact us for any further help.
Keeping Track of Your Resources
Depending on your professor's requirements, you might want to start using one of the two resources Baylor Libraries' provide for keeping track of your references for papers, speeches, and other projects. Either one will save you lots of time and anxiety and will help you format your bibliography; add footnotes, endnotes, or in-text citations to your paper, and do it in whatever format your professor assigns - MLA, APA, Turabian, Chicago, SBL, and a host of others.
Check out our other guides on these resources, RefWorks and Zotero:
