Sources

Ms. MitchellFreshman CompositionAndover High School

A source is an outside piece of information

that helps you learn and helps you support your claims in a research paper.

We use sources to back our ideas up with expertise.

What is a Source?

Just because something has been published

(book or on-line) does not mean it is automatically good.

Anyone can write anything on the Internet. Would you trust the person sitting next to you

to teach you how to perform brain surgery? What if they had a nice looking website?

Link #1 Link #2

Good Vs. Bad

Good vs. Bad

Good Books Scholarly Journals and

Websites Newspapers Well Respected Magazines

(Time, Newsweek, National Geographic, etc.)

Legitimate scientific websites (NASA, American Heart Association, etc.)

Bad

Blogs Personal Websites Wikis (Wikipedia,

etc.) Movies Historical Novels

How do you find sources? How do you tell if a source is good or not? How do you tell if a source is appropriate?

Determination

Library—physical books, encyclopedias,

magazines, etc. Andover High Memorial Hall Network

On-Line—web based search Google If you’re smart about it! Google Scholar E-brary Boston Public Library Online

Finding Sources

Documentation

Citations Contact Information for Author Facts and Statistics Known Organization

Author Known Author Respected Job/Employer

Persuasion Is the product trying to get you to buy something? Vote for

someone? Do something differently than you’re doing now? If so, it’s worth questioning!

Evaluation Sources: Quality

Research Topic: What are the side effects of

second hand smoke? Source #1 Source #2 Source #3 Source #4 Source #5

Which sites were quality, scholarly sources?

Example

Type of Source

Easy? Hard? It matters! A scholarly article meant for medical students is going to be

much harder to read than a fact sheet from the American Cancer Society!

Timeliness See when the source was written If you are researching the US Census, you may want to cite

the Declaration of Independence, as well as more recent sources regarding the census.

If you are researching contemporary Presidential elections, should you use a newspaper article from 1919 talking about the Women’s Suffrage Movement?

Suitability

Relationship to Topic

If you are researching “How to Prevent Shark Attacks off Cape Cod” would an article from National Geographic on the rarity of shark attacks worldwide work for you?

Maybe? It would at least be worth reading to learn more!

What about an article from The New England Aquarium about what role the Cape Cod summer sharks play in the ecosystem?

Probably not. Still, worth checking out. However, it might be too far from your research question.

Suitability