As you read, mark and annotate passages that contain information that is new to you. In your writer’s notebook, record new information in the form of a list or as a series of brief descriptions of what you’ve learned and where you learned it.

You might be tempted to ignore material that’s hard to understand, but if you do, you could miss critical information. When you encounter something difficult, mark it and make a brief annotation reminding yourself to check it out later. Sometimes you’ll learn enough from your continued reading that the passage won’t seem as challenging when you come back to it. Sometimes, however, you won’t be able to figure out a passage on your own. In that case, turn to someone else for help — your instructor, a librarian, members of an online forum or a newsgroup — or try searching a database, library catalog, or the Web using key words or phrases you didn’t understand.