Welcome to Mr. Sullivan's World Civilizations Students!Using this research project as a vehicle, we hope that you will be able to do the following:

1. Polish your historical research problem-solving skills;

2. Learn to use representative examples of information access tools and reference sources you'll encounter in college.

Good luck and happy researching!

--Mr. Sullivan and Ms. Lindsay

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The 5 Keep-It-Simple Steps to
Successful
Information Problem-Solving

Define|Locate and Evaluate|Process|Communicate| Assess

1. DEFINE your need. Get background information on your topic.

• General Reference - Encyclopedias

  • Encyclopedia Britannica 2002 in the library
    • Broad search - Roman architecture
    • Specific search Colosseum

  As you sift through background information, you should jot down important key words, both general and specific, for your search.

2. LOCATE and EVALUATE your information.

To LOCATE, use:

a. Catalogs

• Castle Library OPAC, which uses the Dewey Decimal System
• Public Hawaii State Public Library System using Telnet. [See Walking Your Step-By-Step Through Telnet.]
• University

b. Magazine and Newspaper Sources

• EBSCO HOST

c. Internet, including Search Engines

• Google (try limiting your results: e.g., .edu .pdf) and Google Uncle Sam

To EVALUATE, use the following criteria:

1. Appropriateness (Internet? Encyclopedia? Magazine? etc.)
2. Availability
3. Relevance to topic
4. Suitability (level of sophistication)
5. Currency (judge how important this is for your topic)
6. Authority
7. Reliability (Objective or biased? Verifiable?)

The best teacher, of course, is experience: the more sources you learn to use, the more expansive your repertoire will be and the more sophisticated your information problem-solving skills will become for doing increasingly higher levels of research.

3. PROCESS the information as it relates to your topic.

• Skim, read, organize, take notes, scan, download, highlight, continue to evaluate sources, synthesize.
• Draw conclusions.
• Observe copyright laws.

4. COMMUNICATE the results of your research.

• Create written projects, multimedia projects, visual projects, oral projects.
• Cite sources using MLA formatting. You can use the library's Samples for Works Cited, which follows MLA format.

5. ASSESS both process and product.

Determine:

• whether the information problem was solved
• whether the process was efficient and effective
• what you will do differently next time.