After you have selected and focused a research topic and become familiar with your
library’s resources your next step will be to identify specific sources that may help you
develop your topic. The place to begin is with the library’s reference guides: subject indexes,
bibliographic indexes, periodical indexes, reference works, and the book catalogs. Some of
these reference sources may have been used as part of your topic selection process, but now,
you need to return to them and the other reference guides that are appropriate to your
particular topic to conduct a systematic and thorough search for sources. As you find works
whose titles suggest that they will be useful to you, you need to take down the bibliographic
information about each work, again in a systematic and thorough fashion, to prepare a
preliminary or working bibliography.
A bibliography is a list of research sources. At the final steps of your research report
is to type a list of works cited at the end of your paper that is a formal bibliography or listing
of all the sources you have used in writing it. For now, your task is to continue gathering
sources; that is, you need to use the library indexes and other research tools to locate books
and articles for your paper. The list of possible sources you draw up now as you begin your
research is your working bibliography.
A working bibliography is a list of sources relevant to your topic. It is tentative,
informal and practical. You can add the working bibliography during the course of your
project as you discover additional sources and you subtract from it as some sources and lists
turn out not to be helpful. The only requirement for a good working bibliography is that you
are able to use it conveniently. Since it is for your own use- you can record the information
you need in any way you like. For example, when you find a likely book from a subject
citation in the OPAC, you can jot down in your notebook the key information that will enable
you to locate it- perhaps only its title and call number. On the other hand, there are
advantages to including more complete information in your working bibliography. In that you
will use this information later, at the end of the project, when you type your works-cited
page. Therefore, you save considerable time including your working bibliography all the
information you will need later. For that reason, it is important for you to be acquainted with
the standard convention for citing sources. You will use a list of sources in three important
ways:
1. To survey your proposed topic to determine that sources are available to complete a
research project.
2. To find the specific works on the list for study and note-taking.
3. To prepare the proper documentation of the sources used in your research.