To begin, you will need to identify and research a political, legal, or social issue and determine whether you think a change should be made within the broader society. Then, you will need to argue your opinion convincingly. Ideally, you want to choose a narrow topic. Make sure you have your topic approved by your instructor before you begin researching. Try to choose an issue that intrigues you, since the genuine interest will result in a better final paper.
Conducting research using library resources helps ensure that you find quality sources necessary for this assignment. Check out the Recommended Resources and Discovery @ the Library pages for places to start, or you can contact a librarian during our open hours via email, text, chat, or phone.
As a college student, conducting research effectively will be required in order for you to succeed in your classes. Whether you're asked to write a speech, a paper, or something else entirely, odds are you're going to need to know how to do some research in order to complete the assignment. Sometimes, though, research can be daunting -- it feels too time-consuming, unclear, or stressful. Luckily, it's a process that gets much easier with practice and a solid strategy. Check out the Getting Started with Research LibGuide to get an overview of the research process and some tools and resources to help you jumpstart & navigate the process.
You have access to millions of titles through Locate, our library catalog, and MOBIUS OpenRS, the statewide catalog. Students often find recently published titles about their topics or use slightly older titles as additional resources. Remember to search for books early -- if you request books from another library, they can take a week or so to arrive at our campuses.
To learn more about using Locate to find books available at the library, watch this video.
To learn more about requesting books with the MOBIUS OpenRS catalog, watch this video.
Why do you need to cite sources?
As the MLA Handbook (8th ed) will tell you:
“Academic writing is at its root a conversation among scholars about a topic or question. . . .Given the importance of this conversation to research, authors must have comprehensible, verifiable means of referring to one another’s work. Such reference enable them to give credit to the precursors whose ideas they borrow, build on, or contradict and allow future researchers interested in the history of the conversation to trace it back to its beginning” (5).
As a student, part of your education includes learning documentation styles like MLA. Learning MLA and other styles will help prepare you for other conventions and standards when you enter a career field. Also, by carefully documenting your research and by identifying the ideas that you have borrowed, you will avoid plagiarism. Plagiarism is a very serious offense involving the theft of intellectual property, and it can lead to embarrassment, loss of credibility, and even lawsuits (7). You can avoid plagiarizing by citing other authors when you quote or paraphrase their words and ideas, so make sure you are properly citing sources in your papers. Learn more about avoiding plagiarism here.
Work Cited
Modern Language Association of America. MLA Handbook, 8th edition, MLA, 2016.
Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL) provides excellent explanation and examples for using different citation styles.
They provide: