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Appendix Part A: Skimming Your Sources and Taking Notes
To record the information that will eventually go into your document, you need to skim your potential sources and take notes. Don’t try to read every potential source. A careful reading of a work that looks promising might prove disappointing. You might also get halfway through a book and realize that you must start writing immediately in order to submit your document on time.
Skimming Books and Articles
To skim effectively, look at the following parts of books and articles.
In a book, skim
In an article, skim
Skimming will not always tell you whether a book or article is going to be useful, but it can tell you if a work is not going to be useful—because it doesn’t cover your subject, for example, or because it is too superficial or too advanced. Eliminating the sources you don’t need will give you more time to spend on the ones you do.
Note taking is often the first step in writing a document. The best way to take notes is electronically. If you can download files from the Internet, download bibliographic references from a CD-ROM database, and take notes on a laptop, you will save a lot of time and prevent many errors. If you do not have access to these electronic tools, get a pack of note cards.
Most note taking involves three kinds of activities: paraphrasing, quoting, and summarizing. Knowing how to paraphrase, quote, and summarize is important for two reasons:
For a discussion of plagiarism, see Appendix, Part B
Recording Bibliographic Information
Record the bibliographic information for each source from which you take notes.
Information to record for a book
Information to record for an article
For electronic sources, record any additional relevant information such as identifying numbers, database name, and retrieval data.