Academic Research Booklet

14

Choosing the right books and articles You do not have to read the entire thing! Books Read the blurb on the back cover or inside front cover of physical books and in the summary or notes section on the online catalogue. If after reading you decide you need to know more move to step two otherwise put it aside and move on! Read the contents page and make a note of any chapters which sound relevant. Either start reading the relevant chapters (if you find you need to read further chapters then do so) or... Using your keywords scan the index (in the back of the book) to find correlating words and go directly to those pages and read around the relevant information. Discard any books which are not relevant or useful to your study. Online journal articles Read the abstract or first and last paragraphs. Use CTRL+F (Windows) or CMD+F (Apple) to search for your keywords. Read around the key words to determine if you need to read more fully in depth and do so if need be. NB: Using the index and CTRL+F/ CMD+F function is a good way to jump to relevant bits of information however, using this method can result in taking information out of context.