Music : Just the Basics

From Purdue's Online Writing Lab--MLA Formatting and Style Guide

(Please note: There is a citation generator on this site that is not free or recommended. See the list of recommended citation generators on our guide to Style Guides and Manuals.)

Some tips to get you started:

• Understand your assignment.  What kind of information do you need?  Peer-reviewed journal articles, literary criticism, biographical information?

• Know your deadlines.  It is so much easier to do your research early so that you will have plenty of time to write your paper.

• Develop your topic.  Narrowing your broad idea to a specific question you want to research will save you much time and effort.

• Brainstorm keywords.  Think about keywords related to each aspect of your topic to help in searching.

If you run into any trouble at any point in your research process, you can always Ask Us for help. 

Another advantage to starting your research early: you can schedule a consultation with a librarian. Librarians are here to help you navigate the many resources available to you, and a consultation is a great opportunity to make sure you are looking in the right places. Librarians are glad to help!

Once you have selected an initial topic, the next step is to develop research questions. To begin:

• Write down what you already know or don't know about the topic.
• Using the information you wrote down, develop questions you'd like to answer when doing your research.
  • Use probing questions such as why? how? what if? should?
  • Avoid questions that can be answered with yes or no.

The one minute video below provides more tips.

For more information on beginning your research, check out the Libraries Research Guide Research 101.