All students at Union County College are expected to become "information literate" before they graduate and all college-credit courses are expected to have an information literacy component.  

"Information literacy" requires that you can do research on any topic assigned using the library and the internet.  It requires that you can distinguish facts from opinions, reputable sources from propaganda, primary sources from secondary sources, and much more.  It also requires that you can do a bibliography.  The end product of research is usually a term paper or article or book.   My sophomore level classes require such a term paper.  My freshmen level classes, that is the Western Civilization courses, require an annotated bibliography.  Both processes, doing the research for an annotated bibliography or going on to write a term paper, will help you to become information literate.

Picking a Topic

You are required to do a bibliography or research paper. If you have no idea what you want to do, well, what interests you?  If nothing is of particular interest, pick a topic either from the assigned list of topics provided by your instructor (if one was provided) or look at the index at the end of your main textbook.   Do a bit of preliminary research to find out: a) is there enough material readily available to do the bibliography or research paper and b) does the topic you picked seem even remotely interesting to you? If the answer to either question is "no," then go on to another topic and repeat the process.

Throughout the process of doing research, you should be very careful to note down where the information came from.  When you quote or paraphrase someone else's information, you must footnote the material in the text of your paper and then provide a bibliography of sources cited and researched at the end of the paper.

Doing a Term Paper in my American Government, International Politics, and World Geography Courses

Those of you in my sophomore-level courses are required to do a term paper.  Instructions, term paper topics, and deadlines are listed in your regular syllabus or are discussed in class.  Please note that you must use the Turabian format.  You are required to have footnotes and a bibliography.  Footnotes should be on the bottom of each page.  With word processing programs like WORD, this is very easy to do.  Your bibliography at the end of your paper does not require annotation, nor should it be grouped into categories.  These requirements apply only to my Western Civilization courses.  Simply alphabetize your bibliography.  (It is still useful to know the different kinds of research materials available.  It is useful to know the difference between an article in an encyclopedia, articles in scholarly journals, articles in popular magazines, articles in newspapers, books, and  government documents.  Each is cited differently.)

I have, however, required, my sophomore-level students to submit an outline of your term paper and a brief, at least five item,  bibliography. The outline can be very general but it should indicate a thesis statement and the general content of your term paper. 

Outlines usually follow a format using Roman Numerals, Capital Letters, Arabic Numerals, and Small letters for their subdivisions.

 The bibliography should be alphabetized and include two books and three scholarly articles.

Doing an Annotated Bibliography for Western Civilization

To do your annotated bibliography, use the format shown on the Annotated Bibliography page.

My students in the Western Civilization courses are required to do an annotated bibliography.  The specific deadlines for this annotated bibliography are found in the syllabus for each course.  The material on this page supplements the syllabus.

I have broken the process of doing the annotated bibliography into three steps.

Step One:  Select a topic for your bibliography.  Pick any person, event, or idea listed in the index of your textbook.  Clear the topic with me and start doing the annotated bibliography.  No two students will be allowed to select the same topic.  Whoever chooses first, gets the topic. 

Step Two:  Do a five entry annotated bibliography.  These five entries must be grouped into three categories:
    a.  one entry from an encyclopedia;
    b.  two book entries; and
    c.  two articles from a scholarly journal.

I do not want you to use WEB sources for this part of the assignment.  Do not use an internet encyclopedia.  I want to you go to a real library and look at real books.  If you can not find any articles because the library has too limited a selection of magazines and journals in print form, then you may use a data base.  The article must still be cited as if you had seen it in print form.

Step Three.  Do a ten entry annotated bibliography.  Use the five entries from Step Two and add five more.  These ten entries must be grouped into
    a.  one entry from an encyclopedia;
    b.  two book entries;
    c.  two articles from a scholarly magazine;
    d.  one article from a popular magazine;
    e.  one original source (If you don't know what 'an original source is, then ask one of our professional librarians at Union County College Kenneth C. MacKay Library or look it up;  and
    f.  three sources that were found on the internet. (Read my Web page on Six Rules for Web Citations before doing this part of the assignment.)

Union County College Library Resources

When doing research, the best place to begin is to go to the Library.  I would highly recommend that you visit the Kenneth C. MacKay Library on our Cranford Campus.  All our librarians are friendly.  You can find their names and pictures on the Library's Home Page.

When you log on to the Union County College's Owl's Nest, then click onto "Academics" and select Library Home. 

Here is the link to the list of Library Faculty and Staff.

Another useful set of links from the Library's Home Page is labeled "Writing A Paper."  Under "Citation Guides" you will find a pamphlet on Using Turabian.  This Guide is very useful except that when citing scholarly journals, I do want you to indicate both the Volume and the Issue Number of the journal where the article appeared.  When the journal came from a data base, then I want you to provide more information that shown in the Guide.  Where there is a discrepancy between the Library's Guide and my own Guidelines, please follow my instructions.

Correct:  Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies  Vol.27 No.1 (1997}
Incorrect:  Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27 no.1 (1997)

The Subject Guides provide links for particular academic subjects such as government,  history, and general news resources.

Much research these days is done through Data Bases.  Many Data Bases are electronic libraries.  They contain the articles printed in thousands of journals and magazines.  Many libraries cannot afford to buy the actual scholarly journals.  They subscribe to a set of data bases which students can access on campus or, sometimes, from home.

Our library has an extensive list of Data Bases.  You may wish to talk to a professional librarian on how to use these data bases.  I recommend that you use JSTOR.