Introduction: Researching Your Topic page 1 of 7 | Next

After you have finalized your topic, you can research it in different ways using many sources. This tutorial will guide you through the different sources that you can find in the Libraries so that you know which ones will work best for you. These may include:

• Books
• Periodicals
• Government Publications

An important thing to keep in mind when exploring these sources is the Information Timeline. This timeline demonstrates when items are published. Depending on your topic, items published at different times may be more or less appropriate. If your topic is very current, you may want to look for sources that have been recently published. If your topic is older, it may be better to look for sources that were published later in the information timeline.

Imagine the Information Timeline like this:

One thing to think about is that the Information Timeline is not absolute. Sometimes circumstances change when information items are published. For example, a blog may be written based on a web site or newspaper article. This would then change the publication date and the respective positions on the timeline. Now let's explore the difference between source types, such as primary versus secondary and popular versus scholarly.