World Digital Library

I like to share new websites I've come across to help conduct research. The World Digital Library at http://www.wdl.org/en is huge yet, only 1339 items, but it includes a variety of manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, recordings, prints and photos. The library itself is new, launched in 2009 by the U.S. Library of Congress (which is a wonderful research site at http://www.loc.gov/index.html) and UNESCO. There are documents from every continent, so if your research involves a document from another country, for instance what European or Asian countries have documented on World War II, you may find some interesting data at the World Digital Library.

Thinking keywords

Coming up with keywords that will cut down your searching is the second toughest part of writing a research paper, after coming up with a broad topic. Let's say you want to write about breast cancer. You know this is much too broad a topic for several reasons -- 1. You'll get about 12 million hits on Google and 2. There are entire books written on the topic. How can you do just to such a broad topic -- YOU CAN'T.

The next thing many students want to do is add another word like diagnosis, treatments, causes or signs. Again, too broad, you'll get about 11,999, 990 hits in Google. Instead think of one type of treatment, such as chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery, hormonal therapy, holistic medicine, even experimental. This is still broad, but we are getting there.

At this point you may want to do some more research on a particular kind of chemotherapy, such as TAC Taxotere, adriamycin and cytoxan, to further narrow your options. Of course, even this is likely to bring up several thousand hits in Google. But there are other ways to narrow your focus.

We know that breast cancer affects both men and women, and we can also break down by gender and age. In addition, we can further break down by ethnic background. So now if I am looking for African American women and their rates of improvement using the drug regimen, I have probably found a pretty good topic. Or how about breast cancer and mammograms and post menopause and Hispanic women?

Notice these are specific keywords and not general terms like treatment or cause or diagnosis. Combine them all into one search and you are on your way to a solid, narrowly-focused research paper.

The Writing Process

Many students don't realize that writing is a process and as such they need a strategy. Many of us (yes, sometimes crazy English teachers) often sit down and just write what comes to mind. This is perfectly okay as a strategy -- it's called free-writing. In my physical classes I like to use a sheet of words I call trigger words. Why not try such a strategy with your own research paper topic?

For example, say your research paper is about the addictive qualities of online gaming. Yet you are having a hard time starting your paper. Put together a list of keywords and vocabulary words you have found in the documents you have reviewed on the topic -- online gaming, virtual reality, gender differences, clinical disorder, computer, Internet, 3D graphics, characters, etc. I suggest starting with about 20-25 words in your list. Let the list sit for a few hours and when you come back to the list, just start writing trying to use all your words writing a couple of paragraphs. It should help you get a start on your first rough draft.

Here's a key to this exercise, though -- set a time limit, 10 minutes is a good start. Don't stop writing until the 10 minutes is up. It doesn't matter if it is nonsense, just keep writing. We can always go back and fix anything we write; the important thing is to just "git 'r' dun!"

7 Steps in Researching and Writing an APA Paper

My book on researching and writing a paper -- working smart, not hard, has been published. You can find it on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Steps-Researching-Writing-Paper/dp/193555168X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1287328793&sr=1-1.

The hardest part of writing a research paper is your topic -- all students hate narrowing a topic. However, if you can get together 4-6 specific keywords, and use most search engine or database advanced search feature, you can cut your research time down to a few hours versus days! For instance, if you wanted to do a paper on playing games online and addiction, these may be some of the keywords you might search -- "internet addiction" AND "online games" AND "compulsive behavior" AND recovery. Notice the use of quotation marks and the word AND capitalized. This is part of Boolean searching -- this will be discussed in another posting.

Try these words in a couple of search engines and library databases and see what you come up with!

Citations and References

It is impossible to memorize or learn all the possibilities of references (citations are just author and year of publication, plus a page number if using a quotation). You will likely never be expected to memorize all the different sources to use in a citation -- book, speech, journal, podcast, etc. There are too many! But keep a guideline like the textbook handy when writing and you can always look up the information. It is what all of us who do a lot of research do.

Research proposals

The research proposal may seem a bit bogus in the whole writing of a research paper, but it is a way to get thinking about your paper and firming up where you are going. In essence, it is a map or a guide to get you to the end of the process perhaps a bit more smoothly. It is part of the preparation process, as well as gives you some indication if you've gone off track. The APA manual I created has a broad version of the proposal as I'm trying to make the manual applicable across a variety of courses. But the main elements are:

• Title of paper (this is a working title and may change)
• Purpose -- what is the problem that you want to study
• Background/Significance -- why are you interested and what makes this topic worthy?
• Description/Methodology -- how are you going to conduct your research -- primary or secondary research (most initial research is secondary)
• References

Fact or fiction

A fact is verifiable and can be "proven" via evidence of some kind. This could involve numbers, dates, testimony, etc. If there is some measuring device or record or memory that can back up the data, then we can consider it a fact. But facts can be manipulated and turned around. For instance, I can saythe U.S. has a 5% unemployment rate; but I can also say, 95% of the employable population has a job. Both are true, but one sounds better than another, what we know in politics as spin.

An opinion is a judgment that is based on facts. Opinion is more than a belief, it is a reasonable conclusion drawn from factual evidence. If you say your significant other is a drunk, it may be your belief; but if he/she was convicted of 5 DUIs then you have the evidence to support that opinion. Not only must we state our opinions as such in a paper, but we also have to provide evidence as to where the information came from.

Both facts and opinions require the same thing -- evidence.