Questions You Need to Ask Yourself

The following questions will help you plan your research. This will help you to become effective and efficient library researchers!

1. What do you already know about your subject?

• For Example:
  What interests you about the topic?
  Where would you go to find out more?

2. How long has your subject existed? Is it a relatively new concept?

If your topic has been around for a long time (e.g., Medieval feasts), there tends to be more information published about it. But, if the topic is very new (e.g., Culinology), there may not be as much information.

3. What broad discipline* does your topic fall into and how are your viewing your topic?

Thinking about the discipline will help you identify resources - plus, you may want to think about how you want to approach your topic (e.g., from a Historical aspect? Scientific aspect? Political aspect?).

4. What kinds of resources would be useful for this
paper / project?

Newspapers? (for current or contemporary first accounts?)
Magazine articles? (for popular viewpoints?)
Journal articles? (for scholarly materials)
Books? (e.g., reference books for facts/statistics or in-depth studies)
Primary resources? (e.g., interviews, letters, diaries, etc.)
Government information? (great for statistics, studies, etc.)

5. Keep the following in mind:

How long do you have to do this paper/project?
How long does the paper/project need to be?

* A discipline is an area of study or branch of learning and often coincides with academic departments (e.g., History, Food Science, Business, etc.).

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