Begin by stating a research question you want the project to address, and ultimately for the project’s thesis to answer. The question should begin with how or why.

Next, I want you to list at least six appropriate and potentially useful sources that you would use in the project. At least four must be secondary sources; the others may be primary sources, but these are optional. Appropriate sources can include:

1) Articles from scholarly or trade journals — The article must be relevant to your topic, of course, but it does not necessarily have to focus on your topic.

2) Books — Again, the book must be relevant. It definitely should not focus on your topic, however, because if an entire book focuses on your topic, you have not defined your topic narrowly enough.

3) Essays published in collected volumes — Often, scholarly essays by many authors are published in collected volumes devoted to a specific topic. Sometimes the essays have been published before, while other times they are commissioned specifically for this collection.

4) Government publications — These can include agency reports, Congressional studies, and other official documents.

5) Internet sources — By this, I am referring to sources found only on the internet, not publications you can access through databases and such. You must vet them carefully to make sure they are trustworthy sources, but the costs of traditional publication have led to more and more legitimate work being published on the web.

Check other sources with me. Note that these are mostly secondary sources, though government documents are usually considered primary sources. Depending on your topic, other potentially useful (depending on your topic) primary sources include newspaper articles, memoirs, and literary and artistic works. Tertiary sources such as encyclopedias (print or online) are unacceptable for this assignment.

For each source, supply a bibliographic citation (MLA or APA style), then write a brief summary explaining its focus, purpose, main argument, and why the source is relevant to and will be useful for your project.

The key part of the explanation is why this source is relevant to your project. Note that a source is relevant if you can imagine citing any part of it in the course of making your argument.

At this stage, you do not need to quote, paraphrase, or cite specific passages you think may prove useful. This exercise is more holistic.

One of the keys to this assignment is choosing sources that you can imagine using in a project with an appropriately narrow focus. Again, that doesn’t mean that the entire source has to address your specific topic — indeed, it is often better if it does not — but some part of the source must. If the sources pull you in too many directions, you ultimately will need to discard some.

Your writing should be clear, thoughtful, and grammatical, as well as carefully proofread.

Follow the Format Rules.

Bring four hard-copies with you to class.

If you complete the exercise according to the instructions, or at least make a good faith effort to do so, you will receive full credit. Ignoring elements of the instructions can bring that down.