BEAM is an acronym intended to help you think about the various ways you might use sources when writing a researched argument. Joseph Bizup, an English professor at Boston University, outlined the framework in a 2008 article. The idea has since been refined and adapted by many others.

Using the BEAM framework, a preliminary bibliography on Galileo and the controversy over heliocentrism might look like this:

Background:

Norton, Stephen D. "Galileo Galilei." In Science and Its Times, edited by Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer, 367-368. Vol. 3, 1450 to 1699. Detroit: Gale, 2001. Gale Virtual Reference Library (accessed February 4, 2017).

Exhibit:

Galilei, Galileo. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic & Copernican. 2d ed. Translated by Stillman Drake. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.

Mayer, Thomas F., ed. The Trial of Galileo, 1612-1633. North York, Ont.: University of Toronto Press, 2012. Contains a selection of translated and annotated primary sources related to the trial.

Argument:

Gingerich, Owen. "Galileo, the Impact of the Telescope, and the Birth of Modern Astronomy." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 155, (2011): 134-141. 

Graney, Christopher M. "But Still, It Moves: Tides, Stellar Parallax, and Galileo's Commitment to the Copernican Theory." Physics In Perspective 10, (2008): 258-268. 

Langford, Jerome J. Galileo, Science, and the Church. 3rd ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992.

Mayer, Thomas F. "The Roman Inquisition's Precept to Galileo (1616)." British Journal for the History Oo Science 43, (2010): 327-351. 

Rothman, Aviva. "Forms of Persuasion: Kepler, Galileo, and the Dissemination of Copernicanism." Journal For The History Of Astronomy 40, (2009): 403-419. 

Shea, William R., and Artigas, Mariano. Galileo in Rome: The Rise and Fall of a Troublesome Genius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Methods:

McMullin, Ernan.  "Scientific Controversy and Its Termination."  In: Scientific Controversies: Case Studies in the Resolution and Closure of Disputes in Science and Technology. Edited by H. Tristram Engelhardt,  and Arthur L. Caplan. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987: 49-91.