Library Research Guides: WRIT 139: The Story and the Writer: Home

Welcome!

This guide will help you find resources for researching your author and topic for this class. It aims to point you to the most useful starting points for your research, with a focus on online resources during the current pandemic.

These are only some of the resources that may be useful to you. Please contact me for help finding, evaluating, or citing sources, or to chat about any aspect of your research! You can email me, make a Zoom appointment with me, or contact me via chat if my chat box under my profile photo shows that I'm available.

Related Guides

ENGLISH & COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
by Karen Storz Last Updated Mar 26, 2024 62 views this year

"Writer's Desk"

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License by thezartorialist.

SuperSearch

Critically Evaluating Your Sources

Here are some criteria to keep in mind when choosing and using both print and online sources:

Accuracy - What is the purpose of the document and why was it produced? Does the author cite their sources and are the sources legitimate?
Authority - Who wrote the source? Is the author credible? What are the author's credentials (educational background, past writing, experience) in this area? Have you seen the author's name cited in other sources or bibliographies? Who published the source? Is the publisher scholarly (university press, scholarly associations)? Commercial? Government agency? Is the source self-published (“vanity”press)? For online information, check the domain of the document — what institution publishes this document?
Objectivity - Does the author have a bias, political or commercial or persuasive?
Currency - Is this information new or based on outdated sources? Can you tell how current it is? How up-to-date are the links (if any)?
Audience - Who is the information written for: a specific readership, level of expertise, or age/grade level? Is the audience focus appropriate for a research paper?

Unsure about a source? Ask me!

Peer Review

Many databases allow you to limit your search to peer-reviewed articles. Learn about peer review in this short video (from the University of Kansas Libraries).