1. Annotated Bibliography

Find a topic that interests you:
More often than not, professors assign research papers with quite a bit of wiggle room for you to choose a topic that interests you. Even if the selection is not the most appealing, choose something that you believe will benefit you the most. Just think of it this way, whatever you pick, you are going to learn something!

Keep Your Sources Organized:
One mistake I used always make whenever I would do a paper is lose track of all my sources. I would read my articles and find my information, but then forget to take note of where I pulled that quote from. Sometimes some sources are dozens of pages long, and to have to read back to find the page you pulled that piece of information is extremely tedious and time-consuming. For this reason, it is very helpful to create a bibliography as you go through your research and find a source.

As soon as you find a source, immediately find the necessary information to cite it. It certainly is worth writing an annotated bibliography. If you have never heard of an annotated bibliography, no problem. It is very similar to a bibliography, with the distinction that an annotated one has a brief description underneath your sources that explains the main idea of what you read. As you go along with your research you may not remember every detail of an article or video. This is where a brief description will save time!

Helpful websites:
Whenever you use your school library databases, they usually have the option to “cite” your source. I would use this to get something on your bibliography, but definitely go back to double check them. There are instances that the automatic “cite” button will provide more information than is necessary. To help you make sure you cited correctly, check out Chicago Manual Style online website and Purdue Writing Lab. Both have excellent insight into how to properly format your citations.