Once you've thought about your topic and you've decided what questions you want to spend your energy and time answering, you're ready to start gathering information that'll help you explore different and specific aspects of your topic.
Finding information is not difficult; the challenge is focusing your search enough to find useful information. What makes information useful anyway?
Useful information:
- Answers your research questions,
- Is appropriate for your assignment, and
- Is from reliable sources.
You don't want to waste your time gathering a bunch of irrelevant, unreliable information that you can't use in your paper.
