Decide who you are researching for. The kind of information you collect, when you research depends first and foremost on why you are researching. Even if you go to the same information sources for two different researched projects, you will probably look for different kinds of data. For example, if you were looking for a summer jobs for yourself, you have go to the same sources as if you were writing a newspaper article on summer jobs. But in the first instance, you have to consider only your own likes and needs of all the readers. Another example, if you have to write a paper on civil rights, you are going to research many of the same sources as if you were checking to find out if your own civil rights were violated by the dean’s office. But for the paper you are going to have to make sure that you take careful notes, in fact, you will probably need to copy the sources of your information completely enough that they can be quoted and footnoted. For your own information, you may not need to copy anything beyond perhaps an address, telephone number and other contact information.

Before you do a research paper, you must consider who is going to read it. One professor may insist on complete footnotes while another will not require any. One maybe partial to hard fact while another prefers original conjecture. A paper that you want to publish may need to include some details that can be left out when you are writing for an instructor who knows you well. A paper that will be graded by some unknown teaching assistant has to take into account the fact that he may know little about the subject and less about your own brilliant range of background knowledge.

Therefore, before you begin any research, pin point who it is for, for you, a known reader, or one or more unknown readers. Try to get fix in you mind on how much you can reasonably expect them to know about your topic, and on how much they want to know or expect you to demonstrate that you know about it in the finished paper. Since most student or learners major search needs are for course papers, well focus on that goal throughout this research techniques. Keep in mind that for projects less demanding than research paper, you can often eliminate many of the steps in or strategies.