Tips for Success:

Colleen: Don't wait until the last minute to get started on your research assignments. Chances are other students are going to pick very similar topics to yours and you might go out to the shelf and find there aren't any more books left on your topic, which means you'll have to borrow the books from another institution within Ohiolink perhaps which is going to take you about two to four school days.

Make sure you understand the requirements of your research assignment by asking questions of your professors. Also don't hesitate to ask questions of the reference librarians at your library. They are there to help you get started and to help you track down that difficult to find information.

Another word of caution, be careful about using free internet sites for citing sources for your papers. Your professors are experts in their field they're very aware of the publications out there. So make sure that you're evaluating the credentials of the person who wrote the web site or even of the article you're reading.

Let's say you were doing a paper on cloning and you came across this site called "Clones R Us." The first thing you should do is try to find the author of the web site and see what credentials they have. Let's look in the About us area to the left here.

Here's a close-up of what it says, "Dream Tech exists in a different dimension. As you've hopefully realized, this site is a spoof site which simulates one possible ramification from advances in cloning science."

The last pitfall I'd like to make you aware of is plagiarism. Don't even think about doing this. Plagiarism is taking someone else's intellectual thought or property and claiming it as your own. As simple as it is to cut and paste in today's environment, don't be tempted to do it.

Hopefully these modules will be very helpful to you when you start your college career. Whether you go to Bowling Green State University or go to another Ohio institution or even out of state, I wish you luck. I still encourage you to ask questions at the reference desk and ask questions of your college professors as well.