Reference and Facts

Group6:Eliza Pokharel, Jiayin Pan, Huan Yu, Wenda Qian

Reference and Facts

1.     Have you ever needed to know the?

• Population of a city?
• Major achievements of a famous individual?
• Definition or a term or phrase in an unfamiliar subject?
• Date of an important event?

2.     These types of questions are best answered by reference sources, which provide quick, factual information on a topic. There are many types of reference sources. For example,

• Dictionaries contain definitions of terms.
• Encyclopedias contain concise, factual information on topics or concepts.
• Handbooks contain practical information (e.g., how to do something) on a topic.
• Almanacs contain calendars, basic facts, and statistical information relating to people, places, and events.
• Biographical sources contain biographical information on individuals such as birth and death dates and major achievements.

3. Why use reference sources?

Reference sources are often the best place to start your research because they:

• Provide a good introduction to a topic.
• Provide brief, factual information.
• Summarize and clarify issues.
• Define unfamiliar terms.
• Identify additional relevant sources such as books and periodical articles.

That will make our paper be reliable, more informative, unbiased and broad. It is good for back ground information on topics.

4. How can you find reference sources or cite the reference?

There are several different ways to find reference sources on your topic:

1.     We can search on-line to find the reference on web-site.

2.     We can go to library to find books, journals or magazines, probably, to ask help at Help Desk. 

3.     Websites can be cited by different formats two of which are covered here; "MLA bibliography citation style" first, and then the "APA in text citation" secondly. Citations in the APA style are commonly used for research papers and the like.