Welcome to the Research Tips page where you will find resources that will help you develop the skills to do effective research for your class assignments.
Starting Your Research
Before beginning your research, it’s a good idea to understand the research process.
McMaster University’s Undergraduate Guide to Research is a good starting point and highly recommended for tips on doing research. This guide is geared for first year university students but can be used by high school students too.
They also have excellent, short tutorial videos on their How Library Stuff Works video page.
Doing the Research
Creating a Search Strategy
Once you have outlined your topic, use the keywords you have identified to search for print and online resources. Your searches may lead to uncovering more search terms and further refining your search strategy.
Use the Planning Your Search Strategy Worksheet to
plan your search strategy.
Use the Annotated Bibliography worksheet to help you
evaluate your sources.
Watch this video for suggestions on how to choose keywords.
Using The Library Catalogue
An important first step is knowing how to search your library catalogue.
Use the Idea Exchange library catalogue (called Bibliocommons) to search for books, magazines and articles from public library databases.
Use this short guide, Using Library Catalogue 2023 to help you search your library for books and other materials.
Using School Databases
Assignments often require finding information from peer-reviewed, authoritative sources. School databases and eBooks are good places to search for such information.
Start your research by using the Online Resources page where you will find a good selection of school and public library resources. All school databases require passwords or logins when working from home. Please contact your teacher or the school librarian.
Plagiarism
It is important to acknowledge any information, ideas or content that are not your own. Please see the school’s plagiarism policy for more information.
Students have the responsibility to ensure that all work submitted is their own.
Things you need to provide a footnote or end note for:
- Ideas, opinions, theories that aren’t your own.
- Facts, statistics, graphs, emails, pictures, data, notes or other pieces of information. You need to cite where you got them from.
- Quotations of spoken or written word belonging to someone else.
- Paraphrasing another’s spoken or written words. Credit the author.
Plagiarism can result in serious consequences for the student. Talk to your instructor or librarian about ensuring all work is cited correctly.
Citation Style Guides
In this section you will find a link to the Waterloo Catholic District School Board style guide (MLS Style). There are also links to the various style guides found on the OWL Purdue website.
Download the MLA Citation cheat-sheet here.
You can use the Waterloo Catholic District School Board Style Guide (MLA Style).
Another excellent resource for citation is the Owl Purdue Writing Center.
Use these citation guides from the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) to help you cite sources used in your paper:
APA Citation Guide (7th Edition): Use to cite sources in the social sciences and sciences.
MLA Citation Guide (9th Edition): Use to cite sources in humanities and language arts.
Chicago Manual of Style Citation Guide: Use to cite sources in history, business and the fine arts.
Note: all of the school Gale Databases and Gale eBooks offer automatic source citations in MLA (9th Edition). Use the Citation Tool to change to APA (7th Edition) or Chicago (17th Edition).
Copyright and Fair Dealing
When using information, images and other content from the internet, it is important to give credit where credit is due. Like any other source you should give attribution.
This short video from Learn and Lead is based on a video from Common Sense Media.
Information on copyright, fair dealing and the rights of teachers and students regarding copyright from the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada.
