Animal and Food Sciences

Choose a research topic that interests you. Once you have thought of a topic, try stating it in the form of a question. This will help to narrow your topic and focus upon the aspect of the topic that you are going to research. So if you first thought of writing about Animals and Treatment, try stating it in the form of a question: "How is the treatment of animals affected by large scale production techniques?"

Reading an overview of your topic from a general source such as an encyclopedia provides background information, key words, and often a list of books and articles for further reading. This is the only step at which using Wikipedia is appropriate. Use the background information you located to determine key words or phrases that might be used to describe your topic. You may want to focus on a particular animal (cattle) or a particular aspect of production (animal housing).

You can use these keywords to search for books or magazine, journal and/or newspaper articles. Use the tabs on this guide to learn about each of these formats.