Library Resource Guide: Students

The research process starts with the selection of your topic. It's possible your professor or instructor has already assigned a topic, or it's also possible that you get to choose a topic on your own. 

First, make sure you understand your assignment thoroughly. Is it an argumentative paper, where you will need to choose a side and find evidence to support it? Or is it a literature review or annotated bibliography, where you need to find quality sources and be able to summarize them?

Next, try to come up with different ideas that interest you or to which you can personally relate. This makes the research process much easier and more enjoyable!

Step 1: Choose your topic - Your Assignment is Your Starting Point

• Do you need to write an 1-2 page essay or a 5-7 page research paper?
• Give a  2-3 minutes speech, a a 6-7 minute speech?
• Do you need to present a short presentation or a long one? 
• Do you need to demo how to prepare a healthy snack or a healthy meal?
• Does your assignment require you to use specific sources - . books? news articles? scholarly articles? Videos?

             The scope and nature of your assignment will help you make a decision about what topic to choose. 

• For  2-3 minute speech or presentation may need information AND  images or other visuals
• For 1-2 page essay you may need background and scholarly information that requires thought and evaluation
• Your target audience will guide your decision making:
  • instructor
  • classmates
  • someone else

• Use the tools In this guide to help you get started!

By NCSU Libraries

This video is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States license.

  NewsBank's Access World News is a comprehensive news collection ideal for exploring issues and events at the local, regional, national and international levels. Its diverse source types include print and online-only newspapers, blogs, journals, broadcast transcripts and videos. Use it to explore a specific event or to compare a wide variety of viewpoints on topics such as politics, business, health, sports, cultural activities and people. Content is easily searched and sorted through an intuitive, map-based interface.

CQ Researcher is noted for its in-depth, unbiased coverage of health, social trends, criminal justice, international affairs, education, the environment, technology, and the economy. You can browse CQ Researcher by topic, track specific controversial topics by date or look up topics in their Pro/Con section. Pro/Con offers succinct articles by experts arguing for and against given topics (NetBadge log-in required).

   Your class notes or other materials may provide good ideas for an assignment, paper, or research topic. 

Flip back through your notes, handouts, slides, or textbook to see if anything sparks your interest. Is there any issue, study, or reference that you'd like to investigate more fully? Is there an important issue that would be interesting to learn more about?

• Idea Generator

  From Old Dominion University. The "Idea Generator" was first created by Cynthia Wright Swaine in 1994 as a tool to help students at ODU select topics for papers or other assignments. "Idea generator" has become a generic term.

• New York Times Topics

Browse the list to find topic pages about people, places, organizations, and subjects. Each topic page collects all the news, reference and archival information, photos, graphics, audio and video files published about the topic on NYTimes.com.

• TED Talk Topics

  Browse TED topics from A to Z!

UVAWise Writing Center - The Center offers free, private face-to face consultations in which students can get assistance with any writing project or presentation.  Always bring your assignment with you to the Writing Center.

UVAWise Academic Success Center - Get expert help in your particular area of study.