Navigating the Library

Navigating the Library — page 3
YOU CONDUCT RESEARCH EVERY DAY AND YOU PROBABLY DON’T EVEN REALIZE IT When you want to know the score of last night’s football game you check on line If you’re wondering how to spell or define supercilious you get out the dictionary And when you’ve forgotten the math assignment you e-mail your friends to ask them Although these research situations are rather informal the skills you use for them are similar to those you need to conduct research for writing After all research is basically just a search a search for sources that contain specific relevant and accurate information about your topic At some point during nearly every research project you will find yourself in need of a library Why Libraries contain information that you can’t get any where else and that information is organized in a way that makes it easy to complete a systematic search Say for example that you want to research Mt Everest The library can provide you with autobiographies by the first men to ever reach the summit videos of the Himalayas and even online journal articles 4