Appendix Part A: Skimming Your Sources and Taking Notes

Printed Page 606-609

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

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To skim effectively, look at the following parts of books and articles.

In a book, skim

  • the preface and introduction: to understand the writer’s approach and methods
  • the acknowledgments section: to learn about help the author received from other experts in the field or about the author’s use of primary research or other resources
  • the table of contents: to understand the book’s scope and organization
  • the notes at the ends of chapters or at the end of the book: to understand the nature and extent of the author’s research
  • the index: to determine the extent of the coverage of the information you need
  • a few paragraphs from different portions of the text: to gauge the quality and relevance of the information

In an article, skim

  • the abstract: to get an overview of the article’s content
  • the introduction: to understand the article’s purpose, main ideas, and organization
  • the notes and references: to understand the nature and extent of the author’s research
  • the headings and several of the paragraphs: to understand the article’s organization and the quality and relevance of the information

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:

  • To a large extent, your note taking will determine the quality of your finished product. You want to record information accurately and clearly. Mistakes made at this point can be hard to catch later, and they can ruin your document.

    For a discussion of plagiarism, see Appendix, Part B

  • You want to use your sources responsibly. You don’t want to plagiarize unintentionally.

Recording Bibliographic Information

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Record the bibliographic information for each source from which you take notes.

Information to record for a book

  • author
  • title
  • publisher
  • place of publication
  • year of publication
  • call number or URL

Information to record for an article

  • author
  • title of article
  • title of periodical
  • volume
  • number
  • date of publication
  • pages on which article appears
  • call number or URL of periodical

For electronic sources, record any additional relevant information such as identifying numbers, database name, and retrieval data.