【正文】 nt. The sorts of activities that constitute a research paper identifying, locating, assessing, and assimilating other’s research and then developing and expressing your own ideas clearly and persuasively are at the center of the educational experience. A research paper is a form of written munication. Like other kinds of nonfiction writingletters, memos, reports, essays, articles, booksit should present information and ideas clearly and effectively. You should not let the mechanics of gathering source materials, taking notes, and documenting sources make you fet to apply the knowledge and skills you have acquired through previous writing experiences. This handbook is not about expository writing. It is, instead, a guide for the preparation of research papers. No set of conventions for preparing a manuscript can replace lively and intelligent writing, however, and no amount of research and documentation can pensate for a poor presentation of ideas. Although you must fully document the facts and opinions you draw from your research, the documentation should only support your statements and provide concise information about the sources cited。 and often permits access to other electronic resources, including the full texts of sources, available at the school or over the Inter. A central information system might also be part of a work linking the catalogs of a number of libraries. For instance, the system in your school might permit you to search the holdings of local public libraries or of other schools. If your library is part of a work such as the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) or the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN), you may be able to locate sources recorded in the catalogs of thousands of other libraries. You can often use the central information system even if you are not physically in the library. There may be connections with the library at various locations on the campus. With a personal puter and a modem, you might also be able to access information in the system from locations on and off the campus. Reference Works Indexes. Indexes guide you to material in newspapers, magazines, and journals as well as to writings in book collections. The New York Times Index lists news stories and feature articles in the New York Times. National Newspaper Index covers the Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Canadian News Index provides citations to the major newspapers in Canada. Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature indexes the contents of popular magazines. Essay and General Literature Index lists essays and articles published in books. Most subject areas have their own specialized indexes, such as Art Index, Business Periodicals Index, Education Index, General Science Index, Humanities Index, Index to Legal Periodicals, Philosopher’s Index, and Social Sciences Index. Bibliographies. Bibliographies are lists of related publications and other materials. Serial bibliographies in specific disciplines include Bibliography of Agriculture, Bibliography and Index of Geology, and MLA International Bibliography (for the field of language and literature). Bibliographic Index contains citations to bibliographies that are published as books or pamphlets, as parts of books, or in periodicals. (For sample citations from a bibliography. Collections of abstracts. Abstracts are summaries of journal articles and other literature. Collections of abstracts include Biological Abstracts, Chemical Abstracts, Historical Abstracts, Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts, Physics Abstracts, Psychological Abstracts, and Sociological Abstracts. Summaries of doctoral dissertations are available in Dissertation Abstracts International. Guides to research. There are guides intended to direct you to the most important sources of information and scholarship in the area you are researching. Whereas indexes, bibliographies, and collections of abstracts tend to strive for prehensiveness and objectivity in presenting information, guides to research are usually selective and evaluative. Some research guides cover entire fields, such as James ’s Literary Research Guide (3rd ed. [New York: MLA, 1998] )。 others do not. For research papers, outlining can be a particularly useful intermediate activity between research and writing. In fact, some instructors require each student to hand in an outline with the final draft. Others require a draft outline earlier, asking the student to submit not only a topic for the paper but also a tentative list of subtopics for research. They then suggest that this working outline be continually reviseditems dropped, added, modifiedas the research progresses. You may find a series of outlines helpful, whether or not your instructor requires them, esp