Tutorials A-to-Z: Home

Get an overview of the MLA, APA, and Chicago/Turabian styles, and see examples of both in-text citations and works cited.

This page provides information and tips on understanding your assignment, generating search terms, finding background information, and revising your topic.

The acroynm CRAAP stands for Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose. You can use the CRAAP Test to help evaluate resources you find, including books, articles from newspapers, magazines, or journals, and websites.

Provides reasons why finding background info on your topic is important, as well as suggestions on where to look for background info.

Tips are provided on how to identify the keywords of your topic, as well as strategies for generating search terms.

Get information on paraphrasing and avoiding plagiarism.

Get tips and see a couple of examples of paraphrasing.

View a five minute video that will explain all about peer reviewed articles.

Take the Columbia College Plagiarism Tutorial and Quiz. Log in to CougarTrack and look under "Menu→ Student → Academics→ Resources"

Learn the difference between primary and secondary sources.

If you are finding too little information on your topic, or too much information, you might consider refining your topic. This page provides suggestions on how to do that.

Learn the difference between scholarly and popular articles.

Get tips on searching, and also an explanation of Boolean operators and the use of truncation and wildcard symbols.

Get tips on resources that can help with selecting a research topic.

View a video produced by Ovieatt Library at CSUN about types of information sources that might be helpful with your research assignment.

Understanding your assignment is crucial to your success! Get tips and view a video on this important first step.

Learn what information you will find in library databases and when to use them appropriately for research.

How does the information get into Wikipedia? Find out what goes on behind the scenes by viewing a six minute video.