Store Research Information

It sometimes seems that the newest generation of writers knows how to research topics only with an Internet connection. Some think the Wikipedia is an authority to cite. If you're working on something important and for public consumption (eventually), you need to return to the information's roots. That means finding its source in print if you can. For academic research, often the original source is the only acceptable version to cite. You might not have an actual copy of it, but your digital one should contain all the sourcing information (title, authors, date published, location, page numbers, editors and perhaps in what other publication).

In all your other researching, copy to disk or print out versions of the pages you might use. My rule of thumb in journalism was to have about ten times as many facts as made it into the story. You want the data safe in case you can't find it again (you did remember to capture the pages' URLs, too, didn't you? They aren't always obvious, nor do they always appear in the data.) Pages often "disappear" for a variety of reasons. Last week I tried to write about a well-known British author's views on critics, only to find the Guardian Unlimited had removed both parts of her article in a spat over copyright ... and I haven't found a free archived image yet!

You also want to be able to verify the accuracy as well as the existence and credibility of your sources for others. When printing out pages, set the page layout software to display the date, name of the site and the URL. Be certain you have the same information for any data saved on disk Even if you've emailed it to yourself, send yourself another message with the referring documentation.