Focusing Your Topic

Topic Selection | Refining

Topic Selection

If you need help selecting your topic:

• Think about what interests you in the course.
• Look through course readings for ideas.
• Discuss ideas with your instructor.
• Look through specialized encyclopedias in the subject area (HOWLcat keyword search for encyclopedias will list many of our subject encyclopedias)

For topics related to current social issues:

• The following websites can help get you started thinking on a topic:
  • Almanac of Policy Issues
  • SpeakOut.com Issues section
  • Librarians Index to the Internet - Social Issues
  • Public Agenda Online

Refining

1. Get background information
   
   • Use a general or subject specific encyclopedia
   • Do a preliminary search in HOWLcat, the library catalog for other books on the topic.
   • Do a preliminary search in some databases to determine aspects of the topic in the literature.
2. Consider ways to narrow your focus. For example, for the topic abortion:
    

   Narrow by	Examples
   aspects of the topic	law and legislation pro-choice movement pro-life movement moral and ethical aspects religious aspects psychological aspects
   time period	19th century since Roe v. Wade
   geography	United States Europe
   population	teens Hispanic Americans

3. You may need to broaden your topic or search keywords, e.g. when searching for a subject encyclopedia, a statistical compilation or when choosing a database. Information on abortion might be found in resources related to women, to health or medicine, to ethics or to law