SPN 326 Research Plan for Final Paper Name: ______

Due date for part II:

II. Researching Your Topic: Gathering relevant information from reliable sources

This part of the research plan is designed to jump-start your research, getting you into the library and onto the Internet to look for sources that relate to your topic and to evaluate their relevance and reliability.

Topic

The topic of my research paper is: ______

Researching Library Sources (books, journals, magazines, newspapers, videos, etc.)

You will need to go Meyer Library to do this activity.

Use the library’s online catalogue (http://swan.missouri.edu/search) to complete each item in the following section.

Keyword search

Do some keyword searches for sources on your topic. Which keywords seemed to yield the best results?

Ex. “Drugs” “Traffic” “Colombia”

______

View some of the records and write down titles that look promising. You can return to them later, searching by title.

Exploring subject headings

Open the record for some of the sources that seem pertinent to your topic. What are the Library of Congress Subject Headings for these works?

Ex. “Drug control – Latin America” “Drug control – International cooperation”

______

______

______

Notice that you can find many more results by following the links to these subject headings.

Consulting bibliographies

Locate at least one potential source in the stacks at Meyer Library. Review its Bibliography section and see if any of the works referenced seem like they might apply to your topic. Use the online catalogue to see if Meyer Library has any of those sources.

Preliminary Bibliography of Library Sources

After completing these activities, fill out the following table with the details for five library books that you intend to consult as you research your paper. Specify the publication information, why the works seem relevant to your project, and where they can be obtained:

Publication information / Summarize relevance
What kind of information is contained in the source that would be relevant to your paper? / Availability
Where can you find it?
Author(s):
Title:
Publisher:
Place of publication:
Date or publication: / ___ Meyer Library
___ Mobius
___ ILL
___ Other:
Author(s):
Title:
Publisher:
Place of publication:
Date or publication: / ___ Meyer Library
___ Mobius
___ ILL
___ Other:
Author(s):
Title:
Publisher:
Place of publication:
Date or publication: / ___ Meyer Library
___ Mobius
___ ILL
___ Other:
Author(s):
Title:
Publisher:
Place of publication:
Date or publication: / ___ Meyer Library
___ Mobius
___ ILL
___ Other:
Author(s):
Title:
Publisher:
Place of publication:
Date or publication: / ___ Meyer Library
___ Mobius
___ ILL
___ Other:

Online Sources

Use an online search engine such as Google.com to search for websites that have reliable content related to your research paper topic. In addition to these keyword searches, navigate the categories on http://lanic.utexas.edu that seem pertinent to your research focus. Try to find websites with up-to-date and reliable content, such as government and other institutional sites (nongovernmental organizations, museums, academic sites, corporate sites, etc.). Use the table below to record information about your most promising search results.

Website Information
What is the source of the information and how reliable is it? / Summarize relevance
What kind of information is contained in the source that would be relevant to your paper? / Availability
Where can you find it?
Website name:
Website URL:
Published by:
Last update:
Reliability: best good fair questionable / ___ Google
___ LANIC
___ Other
Website name:
Website URL:
Published by:
Last update:
Reliability: best good fair questionable / ___ Google
___ LANIC
___ Other
Website name:
Website URL:
Published by:
Last update:
Reliability: best good fair questionable / ___ Google
___ LANIC
___ Other
Website name:
Website URL:
Published by:
Last update:
Reliability: best good fair questionable / ___ Google
___ LANIC
___ Other
Website name:
Website URL:
Published by:
Last update:
Reliability: best good fair questionable / ___ Google
___ LANIC
___ Other