Organizing Research

Source and Notecards

Purpose

• Quick reference: you won’t have to dig through piles of papers

• Sort-ability: you can sort your ideas by subtopic to help you maintain a unified, structured body paragraph.

• Avoid plagiarism: you don’t have the source there to copy from!

Source Cards

• Identifies which source information was taken from

• Includes actual Works Cited entry

• Includes all information needed to create a proper Works Cited entry for all sources– Books, internet sites, newspapers, articles

from library subscriptions, etc.

Sample Source Card- Front

Source #1

“Television Violence” Issues & Controversies On File. 12 Feb. 1999. Issues and Controversies@ FACTS.com. Facts On File News Services. 23 Mar. 2006. <http://www.2facts.com>.

Sample Source Card-Back

• Database: Facts on File

• Title: “Television Violence”

• Author: none

• Issue Date: Feb 12, 1999

• Access Date: March 23, 2006

• URL: www.2facts.com

• Volume or Edition: none

Source Cards- A Tip

• Do all of your works cited entries ASAP- if you don’t have all the needed information, you will have to go back and find your source again

• Do not count on the print out from a library source to have all the needed information

Notecards

• When reading research, you must identify ways to support your claim: statistics, events, experts’ claims, etc.

• Each of these details will receive its own notecard: only one idea per notecard

• The information should be classified into a more specific category: this is called a subtopic

Notecards Con’t

• Every note taken must fall into a subtopic that will be used in your paper

• Ex: Your paper supporting the claim that TV violence harms children will discuss profanity, sex, and physical violence– Now you can focus your research to these

areas:– Your subtopics are: profanity, sex, and

physical violence

Notecard Procedure

• First label your subtopic and the source number• The front of the notecard will hold the quotation

from the source• This means you will copy WORD FOR WORD

what appears in the research source• You will include the page number the information

appears on• You will include the name of the expert

speaking, if applicable

Notecard Procedure

• The back of the notecard will be a PARAPHRASE of the information from the text. This means it is in your own words.

• You have to change both the words and the sentence structure from the original to avoid plagiarism!

Sample Notecard- Front

Subtopic: Sex Source# 1

“The media can increase the salience of intercourse in young viewer’s minds even though they’re not physically and psychologically ready”

Pg 1024 Jane Delano Brown (U of North Carolina)

Sample Notecard-Back

Whether children are physically or emotionally prepared for sex or not, the media can draw focus to it through their graphic images.

Notecards- Tip

• ANYTHING you write on a notecard is coming from an outside source– this means it NEEDS TO BE CITED

• If you use the information from the front- it is a quote. Place the citation at the end of the quote

• If you use the information from the back– YOU’RE USING SOMEONE ELSE’S IDEAS

• This must ALSO be cited OR YOU WILL GET A ZERO FOR PLAGERISIM.