Information Literacy Guide: Read about your topic

After completing this SECTION, you will be able to:

• define your need for information,
• think critically about your topic and need,
• read about your topic and start making notes,
• define keywords by:
• drawing a mind map,
• selecting broader and narrower subject terms,
• identifying different spellings or words
• understand that the financial cost of information is an important issue.

When you search for information, you will need to use keywords. To find the correct keywords, you'll have to do some reading about your topic. In other words, you read to get the right keywords.

Most often, the best place to start reading is in the reference section of the Library. The reference section contains many different types of dictionaries, encyclopaedias, thesauruses, etc., all of which will supply you with more than enough information to start identifying keywords and begin your search.

If your topic is about something that is currently happening in the news, e.g. the new national budget, the best place to start reading will be the latest newspapers and periodicals (magazines).

It is important to start making notes already at this point about the resources you have used, the information you found and where you found it.