Resources

Gathering Information

When gathering information for your assignments and before you begin to take notes, think about your purpose for making notes, which should help you to link ideas you’re finding in resource materials to the topic of your assignment.. While taking notes, it is particularly valuable to record how and where you might use the information and ideas you have located. For help in finding sources see the Research Strategies module.

Ask yourself each question below and click on the sections to learn more.

How will what I note now be useful to me later?

Will I still need to go back to the original source?

There is no method of note-taking that guarantees you will not have to return at some point to the original source. For this reason be sure to record along with your notes the author, title, date, and exact location of the information you may use in your assignment (e.g., helpful insight on income inequality, p. 32, 3^rdpar., Thompson, Canadian Social Justice, 2004). This will save you time if you have to return to the passage again later.

Resist the temptation to copy all of the information in the author’s exact words. Instead, capture the essence of the key ideas as they relate to your assignment, in your own words. It is still important to record the source information even if you intend to paraphrase rather than quote. If you do record a direct quote, be sure to identify it with quotation marks or in some other fashion.

How does this information relate to my topic?