Step 5: Identify Key Sources

  
1. Do Initial Planning   
2. Choose a Topic   
3. Do Initial Search   
4. Refine topic   
5. Identify key sources   
6. Study key sources   
7. Integrate   
8. Present findings   
Copyright 
 
 Notes  
 
Critical Thinking
References
  • Review bookmarked sources online
  • Print web pages of possible key sources
  • Choose key sources
    • Identify the web sources that are key to your project. This will make the information more manageable. 

    How many sources is enough? That depends on your topic and your style of working. You might identify several sources you consider important, but only a few that are absolutely essential. 

    Review bookmarked sources online 

    If you refined your bookmarks in Step 4, you now have a good, well organized set of sources to review. This gives you a good basis for identifying key sources. 

    Start by skimming sources, as described in Step 3. But this time, you have a better idea of what you are looking for. You are looking to zero in closely on sources most relevant to your needs. 

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    Print pages of possible key sources 

    To do a thorough review of the literature, you need to work with printed copies. Research indicates that people are better able to read printed material than material on a computer monitor. (See Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox for February 1996.) 

    Another reason to work with printed copies is that you can mark up and write notes on them. This helps you to understand the material and to make it your own. 

    Some web sites contain two versions of their content, one for online reading and one for printing. The version for printing usually contains longer pages with fewer links. 

    Some web pages are posted in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF), which gives you nicely formatted printouts. To access PDF documents, you need to have the PDF Reader (which is free) installed on your computer. You can download it from the Adobe Systems website (www.adobe.com). 

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    Choose key sources

    Look through the printed copies of potential key sources, and decide which ones are most critical to your project (but don't throw away the others--you may need them at some point!). 
    • Examine sources carefully to determine how relevant they are to your particular topic.
    • Pay attention to your subjective reactions. You may find the writing style or approach of one source to be preferable to another. 
    • You don’t have to agree with a source for it to be a key source. Carefully researching a source with a different view than your own may actually make your work more credible and persuasive.
    • Consider using a variety of  key sources. For example, you could have 

      •  
      • one source that provides a good overview
      • two sources with sharply contrasting views 
      • one source for technical information 
      • one source that concentrates on social implications 
       
    • Identify and obtain any key non-web sources you will be using, such as books or journals.
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    Step 5 Outcomes 

    • Printed copies of potentially key sources of information 
    • Identification of  primary (key) sources 
    • Copies of any key sources that are not available online 
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    Health Sciences Library / HSL Instructional Modules  
    Evaluating Online Information