Getting general info about the topic as refining begins

After the chaotic armchair free-for-all of the previous step, this step basically covers (1) preliminary research and then (2) some real refining of your topic.

Why do preliminary research before the real nitty-gritty stuff a couple steps away? Well, some of the functions include:

·         library familiarization: getting to know where things are and dipping your toes into the whole research pool before diving in head-first

·         fascination with a topic that you'd like to pursue further but don't know enough about

·         examination of the available resources--even if you're familiar with the general subject area and the library--to see how feasible delving further into the topic will prove

Preliminary research though is the first real time in the whole process where you'll be forced to match the internal-- what's come from your mind during the previous step--with the external--the realities you're going to be faced with. And as we mentioned in the first step, that's what a research paper is anyway, an integration between your insights and outside sources. So now is the time to learn what you'll actually be doing in this preliminary research step.

You are constructing a paper and no constructor, builder, or engineer can live solely in the world of wish-lists, blueprints, or pretty diagrams. Eventually you must touch real tools and visit the site of construction to see if it's suitable for the project. Now that you've done that, you can make changes accordingly, which leads us into the stage of topic refining.

This is your first opportunity to scrutinize your topic by either scrapping what you have and returning to the previous step to try something else, or by honing your brainstorms and weeding out the irrelevant and/or adding missing essentials.

Once you've settled on a general subject area or sketchy topic, you'll need to determine if you need refining and actually go about broadening or narrowing down your topic. Then the hunk of undeveloped marble you've sketched out will feel less like an unmanageable boulder and more like a sculpture you're excited about working on.

Preliminary research

So you're at the library. First find out where your reference librarian is: your safety net in troubled waters. Great, but what now?

Go to the computer catalog terminal (which may or may not be just an Internet search screen off the library's WWW home page) and enter in some keywords that have to do with your subject. Whether it's "Renaissance Art," "Postcolonalism," "Dung Beetles" or "Hominids" the idea is to get a sense of how many resources are available in your general area, where in the library your topic has been catalogued, and next to what other sections. Get a feel for the connections even if they aren't your own; libraries are more than worthy models of organization!

With that information in hand, now physically go to the appropriate stacks and do some scanning to get a better sense of how your topic is being treated by other scholars. Flip through the pages. Look at headers, bolded and italicized words, captions, figures (or pictures if you should be so lucky!), tables, table of contents, and indices. You may find after scanning a book on Renaissance Art, that you're more interested in Baroque Art. Aren't you glad you found out now??

How to know if you need to either broaden or narrow down your topic

The first clue is simply the stated length of your research paper. You can't properly discuss "war" in 1,000 words, nor talk about orange rinds for 12 pages. Use your common sense first, then use the concrete feedback you get from the library system.

Preliminary research offers two additional practical guides to determine whether or not you'll even need to refine your topic. Chances are good that you will, but at least asking yourself this question gets you to understand why you would have to.

The amount of resources is often a great guide. For example, if you were either specifically asked for or think you'd need no more than about six to eight references for your paper and there are over 50 books, that's a good sign to narrow your subject area to a more specific topic. Or vice-versa, if you're writing a whopping 15-page research paper where you can easily imagine yourself consulting, if not citing, a couple dozen sources and only five pop up as a result of all your innovative searches, better start "broadening" your horizons, as it were.

The other great guide, which is still concrete but a bit more subjective, is the popularity of the subject area or topic itself. There are two separate elements to consider here. First, there is popularity in relation to the general library-going population who, like you, read up on topics of personal interest. As a matter of course more individuals are going to take out books by Stephen King or on job-hunting than books by straight academics like Jacques Derrida or on historiography or animal symbolism. That's a bit of common sense to remember the next time you try to research the fashion or travel industries which have a broader societal, not just strictly academic, appeal. Second, popularity will rear its head more specifically in relation to students in your class or other academics who might also be interested in working with the topic during the same semester.

Both of these elements will definitely factor into your topic choice. So even if the topic is great and the number of resources is perfect, they may just all sadly say beside them not "On Shelf" but "Due back ##/#/##" which turns out to be way too late for you! The Research section will provide you with some suggestions should this unfortunate scenario arise.

So you need to refine: how to go about doing it

Narrowing

One- or even two-word topics are more aptly called subjects and thus are the most usual culprit for this kind of change; too short is usually too broad. To add more meaningful words--and thus limiters--to your "topic," use the journalist's 5Ws again to restrict your subject to a particular time, place, kind, quality etc.

For example, one of the sample keywords we mentioned on the preliminary research page was "Postcolonialism." How could that be narrowed? What about changing it to an adjective and then asking one of our 5 Ws? Now we have: Postcolonial what? Maybe postcolonial ATTITUDES is something you're interested in. A natural question to follow what could now be who, or in this example, where are those attitudes originating from? So from just straight "Postcolonialism" you now have a specific topic like "Postcolonial attitudes in India" or "Postcolonial attitudes in Canadian fiction." Of course, that would be way too specific to type into a computer database, but at least you have more than one word to find resources for.

Now you try!

Activity: how could you refine the subject "Hominids"? (hints: is there one stage of hominid development you'd want to focus on? what discipline would you be looking at it from? anthropology? archaeology? biology?) Think of some other limiters and then see if you can come up with a specific topic similar to the example above.

Broadening

Having to broaden a topic isn't as common a change since refining is obviously harder to do. But if it's like our silly "orange rind essay" example or something incredibly specific like "The importance of dung beetles to the Australian cattle industry" you're going to find that tracking down resources will be a real pain. No resources, no research paper.

The trick to broadening--whether it's just a mindset to help you locate resources on more obscure subjects, or whether it's to seriously alter your eventual topic--is to look for associations and the context around your topic. Maybe dung beetles aren't just important in Australia but other countries where livestock was originally imported. Maybe it's beetles in general you could discuss, with the dung beetle being an example. Or maybe dung beetles have impacts farther reaching than just the cattle industry. Practice and clues from the few resources you do find will help you feel comfortable moving up (and down) context ladders and intellectual hierarchies surrounding your subject.

The process is basically the same as for narrowing but this time you'd be looking at things from the regular end of a telescope where your (mind's) eye can look at a wider landscape, not just the tip of your nose.