Now that you've created a search statement, it's time to start searching. A good research paper will derive information from a variety of authoratative resources (more about authorative sources in the evaluation stage).
Books - Consult books to learn background and historical information for your topic. Often there may be a chapter that is specific to your topic.
Articles - Articles in scholarly journals, trade journals, and newspapers are more tightly focused on a particular aspect of a topic. Scholarly articles are the most up-to-date sources for original research and lend authority to your paper.
If you need more help, schedule a one-on-one research consultation with your librarian.
Go to the Finding More and Get Full Text pages to learn how to find more information using what you already have and how to get the full text from a citation or citation and abstract.
When to Use a Book or an Article - YouTube video from the libraries at the University of South Florida
Anatomy of a Scholarly Article - An interactive example of a scholarly article and its parts, presented by North Carolina State University Libraries.
Lavery Library subscribes to over 150 databases, offering a wide variety of multidisciplinary and subject specific databases, providing research resources on a multitude of topics. Until you become familiar with the appropriate databases to use for your major/discipline, you may want to consult with your professor or librarian.
The Simple Search on the library homepage will search all the books that the library owns, and a majority of articles available through the library's databases (full text or just the citations). It's still a good idea to explore individual databases related to your topic. Ask a librarian, if you are not sure.
The following are common types of sources used in writing research papers:
Primary - Primary sources are the original materials, where the author has been directly involved in the research or event. It remains in its original form, uninterpreted by others. Examples would be diaries, correnspondences, letters, emails, speaches, empirical research, etc.
Secondary - Secondary sources are items written after the fact. The perspective is different as the author is interpreting what has already happened. Common secondary sources would be newspaper articles, some journal articles, commentaries, criticisms, reviews of the literature, etc.
Tertiary - Tertiary sources are compilations of primary and secondary sources, comprised mainly of facts and references to other sources. Common tertiary sources would be handbooks, almanacs, guidebooks, indexes, dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc.
Scholarly - Scholarly sources,also referred to as academic, refereed, or peer-reviewed, are those written by experts, traditionally professors and scientists. Learn more about scholarly resources in the Evaluate section.
Empirical - Empirical sources are those that come from original research and would also be considered primary sources. You can easily recognize an empirical research paper as it usually contains the following sections within the body of the article:
