Student: 
Teacher:
Course:
Topic:

A. Keywords - teachers often embed research terms in the assignment. List keywords: [related terms, qualifiers, synonyms]:
 
 

B. Search Sources - does this topic involve money? Profit? Ethics? Be careful! Links for these sources are available at your School Library home page.

• Reference [for definitions, more keywords]: World Book [general, junior], Encarta [popular],  Britannica [senior, academic], Access Science [professional information], Webencyclo, Encarta & Canadienne [encyclopédie francophone]. A benchmark source.
• Library - Curriculum Links  pre-selected by staff
• Books - Great background information. Reliable. In depth coverage.
• Online databases [safe, reliable sources of information]: SIRS [search by subject; articles are chosen for their quality], Electric Library [reputable sources but not all of equal relevance or weight: ie. Science versus Science in Time]. Repère [Française]. Understand subject versus keyword searches [subjects are more exact]. Benchmark sources. 
• Government Sources - where appropriate, such as Statistics Canada for basic data, various government ministries for reports and studies.  
• Open Internet search engines: Google, Webcrawler, etc. meta search engines such as Metacrawler. Use Search strategies below and verify accuracy.

Benchmark sources: reliable. Compare all other information to these sources.  Where there is a discrepancy, go with benchmark data.

• Boolean Operators: [and, or, not...Some sites also use near to mean within the same paragraph or within 25 words] 
• ie. Lemieux and hockey; biotechnology and agriculture; 
• Gretzky or Lemieux; transgenic or genetic; euthanasia or "mercy killing" or "doctor assisted suicide"; "child abuse" or "spousal abuse"; "death penalty" or "capital punishment"; (eldest or oldest) and child
• mustang not horse; GMO not food; dating not carbon
• Some searches uses the word and, some use the + sign; all recognize AND.

• Quotation marks: use quotation marks around phrases or proper names. ie. "Genetically modified", "mountain bikes", "Jean Chretien", "The Beatles". Use quotation ONLY around words that always appear together in that order.
• Truncation: use an * to reduce a word to its root, trunk. ie. adopt* will tell the search engine to look for adopt, adopted, adoption, adoptions... ie. genetic*, organism* 
• Wild card: a very few engines use a question mark as a wildcard to replace any letter: ne?t will return next, nest, neat...

The working search string: use combinations of the above to get your search string: "Wayne Gretzky" and nhl and scor*; "genetically modified" and food*

Your search strings:
 

• CAR: complete, accurate, reliable 
• unbiased, balanced, fair
• authored by reputable people; do author’s have a vested interest?
• at reputable sites with information verifiable at other sites or in other types of resources [books, magazines...]
• appropriate for your research
• pay particular attention to who or which agency is responsible for the content [see below on deciphering domain names] 
• look at any site's links: good sites tend to link to other good sites.
• learn to decipher domain names as a key to reliability: ie. www.un.org is a good source of information; www.joeinhisbasement.com/hateshonda/ is not necessarily.

• use the basic part of the URL as a guide: the part after http:// and before the next forward slash: 
• .edu or in England .ac.uk - educational sites: www.ukans.edu is an educational site and is reputable; www.bham.wednut.edu is educational but at the high school level. Be sure not to quote from other students at your own level; watch for k12 embedded in the URL 
• .org - organizations www.un.org is the United Nations site; most .org domain names are reputable institutions. BUT, remember that even organizations can have a bias: www.greenpeace.org has a point of view. Now, anyone can purchase a .org domain name; so verify! 
• .net - an Internet provider who will let anything neither immoral and nor illegal on their site 
• .mil - a military establishment. We rarely see these domain names online but they are reputable 
• .gov - government site; very reputable 
• .com - anyone can buy a .com site; this does not mean they are unreliable, but you must use more caution at these sites. Don't base an entire paper on .com sites.

• Check with your teacher about how many references are required 
• Use proper school format usually found on your school’s web site
• Provide full bibliographic data
• You are normally expected to have a variety of types of sources, from a variety of years including the most recent, reliable research.