Read/think/write/repeat (before, during, and after research)
Now that you have your resources, you’ll start reading, thinking, writing (and revising!) your assignment. The University offers individualized help with writing at the Writing Center.
Don’t be discouraged if you need to repeat some or all of the steps in the research process. Research is sometimes targeted but very often it’s more about exploring strategically. You have a general idea of what you want to find out about; you have good tools like the library’s OneSearch tool and/or library databases; you evaluate the information you find for relevance, credibility, usefulness. Then, as you go through the search process, you define your topic so it’s more specific. You might re-run some of your searches and target certain kinds of information. Eventually you have sources that best fit your project. This will make the writing process much more manageable.
Remember that you’ll need to show what books, articles, etc. you used to complete your assignment. That’s called citation or citing your sources.