Selecting a Topic: Overview
When you are assigned to a write a paper and have to choose the topic, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by ideas or completely at a loss. Thankfully, the Rutgers Libraries provide resources to help you choose and narrow your research topic.
The resources on this page will assist you in gathering background information and refining your topic.
- Review "Finding Background Information" to identify a potential topic of interest.
- Watch the video, "How to Narrow Your Topic."
- Complete the "Search Term Development" worksheet.
- Try the "Mind Map" to further develop relevant search terms.
Finding Background Information
The following sources are useful to identify topics, overviews, background information, concepts, theories, ideas, and key references:
- Covers newspapers and news wires across the world.
- Full-text, weekly topical reports.
- Focuses on topics considered newsworthy or issues of broad interest to the general public.
- Covers newspapers; magazines; trade journals; newsletters; and television and radio transcripts focusing on business.
- Includes topical overviews; essays; book chapters; primary documents; specialized encyclopedia articles; and other sources.
- Collection of over 200,000 scholarly ebooks from various publishers across all academic disciplines.
- Includes specialized encyclopedia articles written by experts in the respective topical areas.
- Good source for background information; overviews; references; terms; and ideas for topics.
- Access one of many subject encyclopedias available through Rutgers University Libraries.
Developing Search Terms
Using the attached "Search Term Development" worksheet:
- Review the example provided (page 1)
- Develop your own topic using your paper topic and the blank page (page 2)
Mind mapping is another technique to help you with brainstorming and further developing relevant search terms. In order to create a mind map, you usually start in the middle of the page with the central theme/main idea and from that point you work outward in all directions to create a growing diagram composed of keywords, phrases, concepts, facts and figures Click on the mind map template below on the left and try it on your own device.
