The processes for many kinds of term paper research are similar.

Some old-but-still-good advice:
Be prepared to explore.

Start long before you think you need to.

Plan to spend a good bit of time gathering materials for your preliminary bibliography (these are the sources you think you will consult.)

Keep your topic flexible; if you can't find enough information, be willing to enlarge your scope. You may end up changing it totally. Don't be discouraged by this. Your teacher may have ideas that s/he can share, or the librarians may have some experience helping students on this topic, too. Don't be afraid to ask or to make a special appointment with a librarian.

New advice:

The Internet is a valuable resource, and it may offer you good stuff, but it is not necessarily the best place to start.

STEP 1.
Check to see what books are available. LOIS (the Clark State Library Online Information System) can tell you what books our library owns and whether or not they're on the shelves or checked out. If your topic involves a country other than the United States, see what books we have on that country, and browse through them. Don't worry too much about your specific topic at this point. We may have reference books that deal with a region of the world that includes your country. Have a look. Ask. Spend some time getting to know your country.

Your teacher probably doesn't want to see general encyclopedias in your bibliography, but it's still okay to use them for background. The cultural atlas series in the reference area will be especially helpful, as will The Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations series, The Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, The Encyclopedia of Latin American Culture and History, and The Encyclopedia of World Cultures.

If you don't find what you're looking for in our book collection, try the OhioLINK Central Catalog. The Central Catalog lists the millions and millions of books owned by college libraries all over the state. You can borrow them (not all at once) by entering some simple information on the computer. It takes 2-3 days in most cases for the books to arrive. Don't underestimate this fantastic resource; the folks who've used it love it!

Remember, books will usually contain the most comprehensive amount of information. Rely on them for many, many topics. They don't always contain the most recent material.

STEP 2.
Try the periodical indexes after you've surveyed what's available in books. Magazines, newspapers and journals are probably not going to be as comprehensive as book collections, but you'll will find more up-to-date sources this way. Sometimes they may be your best source. Academic Search Premier and Buisness Source Premier will tell you what library owns the magazine you're interested in, including ours. In many cases they will offer you full text of the article you're looking for. Try combining words in a standard search.

For example, if you're interested in investigating whether or not Japanese people express emotions in the same ways that Americans do, try searching for the words" Japanese and emotions."

Sometimes this takes a minute, but it can be well worth the wait. Newspaper Source can be a good place to look, too. Newspaper Source indexes several newspapers and offers some full text. You can use that index to pinpoint the article you need, and if full text is not available, search for the article by title in Lexis-Nexis Academic. (The Wall Street Journal is not available in Lexis.)

STEP 3.
Netscape will give you access to a number of additional databases on OhioLINK. You can access this from the OhioLINK home page. Choose "Explore OhioLINK databases by name" for a list of available databases. Try PAIS (Public Affairs Information Service) and Matter of Fact (for statistics). You'll find others, as well, arranged in subject areas. Ask for help if you're confused at this point; the library staff has lots of experience in knowing which ones work best for which topics. Look at Lexis-Nexis Academic and SIRS. Both of these offer full text articles.

STEP 4.
Now, maybe, you're ready to surf. Sometimes you'll find things, other times you may strike out. This is an especially important place to evaluate your sources. It might look good, but as they say, 'garbage in, garbage out' and 'not everything that glitters is gold' and just because it's animated, doesn't make it true.