Find Information within a Source

• Parts of a Book

Use these two book parts to help find the information you need.

• Table of Contents
• Found at the very beginning of a book
• Provides an overall picture of what is covered in the book. Is there a section that has the information you need?
• Index
• Found at the very end of a book
• Provides an alphabetical list of topics covered in the book and the exact pages to locate them

• Skim and Scan

Use these strategies to quickly find the relevant information in any book section, newspaper article, magazine or journal article, or website:

• Scan the entire article or website to determine how it is organized
• If the source is online (website or database), can you search for keywords within the article or website? Try Control+F to bring up a search box.
• Use headings to locate the section that has the information you want to find
• Read the 1st line of every paragraph until you find the section you need
• You may need to skim the entire article or page for keywords to find the information you need.

Next => After finding information within a source, it is time to record that information. Start by learning about citing to avoid plagiarism.