Skip to Main Content

Spark 001 - The Art of Attention (Varnot)

Library Session for The Art of Attention

Decision Time

How do researchers decide which sources to use?

person thinking

Selecting Your Sources

Strategies

  • Read the abstract or summary to get a sense of whether the source might be useful.
  • Look at the citation to determine if the item is a format that you can use (book, magazine article, journal article, newspaper article, DVD, blog, etc.)
  • When you find one relevant source, use it to lead you to others on the same topic.
  • If you're not finding information that exactly matches your topic, use pieces of information from sources that are related. (Information quilting)