Pro Tips:

• Contact a librarian whenever questions arise. Quick questions can be answered via email; more in-depth questions can be handled best with an appointment.
• Work on your project consistently each and every week, so that materials have time to arrive from other libraries and we can answer your questions when you still have sufficient time to thoughtfully revise your work.
• Seek out a variety of sources: books, essays in books, journal articles.
• Use a variety of search tools: Primo, multiple databases, sometimes even Google Scholar. If your topic is interdisciplinary, take a look at related subject guides to find broader research tools.
• Keep careful notes on all of your sources and use a citation management tool such as RefWorks or Zotero. If an online knowledge management tool is not for you, make sure that any system that you do use is thorough.

You might be wondering why a French 420 student would consult subject encyclopedias. The quick answer is that it can't hurt to make sure you have a good sense of how your research question fits in with other scholarly research that has been done--and the bibliographies at the end of encyclopedia articles are an efficient way to make sure you know who the scholars are who've been working on this topic.

Remember that tertiary sources are intended to fill in gaps in your knowledge or jumpstart your research; they should not be cited as scholarly secondary sources for your project.

Cambridge Companions are a series of authoritative essay collections that synthesize the most important aspects of a topic. Each volume is edited by a leading scholar in the field and offers essays written by experts. The companions below are especially relevant for this course.

Not sure where to look?  Each of these online collections will introduce you to a wealth of dictionaries and encyclopedias.