Choosing a paper topic & Performing a keyword search in Kaplan Library

Choosing a paper topic A paper topic needs to be arguable Matters of taste or preference are not really arguable Neither are facts Choose a topic about which normal people disagree Avoid topics dealing with religion or beliefs; often we get too involved to be objective

Yes, you are writing a paper that makes an argument for some side of a debatable topic. But, you need to appear objective by considering all sides of the debate. Those of us with strong beliefs about a topic are unlikely to be able to maintain our objectivity. To this end, you also want to be sure that you don’t offend or “turn off” your reader with strong language or language that hints at bias.

Library Searches Choose keywords by picking the important or main concepts in your topic. Omit question words, prepositions, and articles. Join keywords with AND or OR Truncate to find all variants of a word. Usually, you will use the asterisk * after the word. As in quot* to find quote, quoting, quotation, etc. When/if your original keywords don’t work, try synonyms. Get more general or specific with keywords as you find too few or too many results.