Firstly, clarify what you are searching for.

When instructed; “Write a biography on Harriet Tubman”, you pretty much know where you’re going. But when you have an open topic; “Why Slavery was abolished in America” it is not as elementary.

Our usual first step is Wikipedia. I wiki, everyone wikis, but Wikipedia must never be treated as an authority.Wikipedia has as much validity as your Uncle Ralph.

Yes, great starting point. Often you can enter the full search term, and where there are footnotes, you follow them. But do not accept what you are reading as accurate unless it is validated by a non-wiki source.

Always remember the case of Douglas Spearman, an actor, who learned he was HIV positive by reading his bio on Wiki.This kind of inaccuracy can be corrected when the person or event or thing is present, but when it is not?

Hence Wikipedia as a mere ‘table setting’, the condiments need to be purchased elsewhere.

Another warning is to read dates. Dates are important; not the date when the data was published, but the date when the data was collected.

The World Bank has presented an excellent document on the financial status of nations. The date on the front of the document is 2008.

HOWEVER the research was done in 2005.

How accurate is this document, considering the upheavals in the past four years?

Another vital realm is who published this information? Sometimes one has to research an organisation or the bona fides of the author.

In a topic as American Slavery which has a ‘charge’, one must find a careful ‘middle ground’ between those who need to keep the ‘black man as perpetual victim’ and those who consider slavery no more than a ‘peculiar institution’.

This means one must read both sides then find other sources which deal with limited facets so as to present as unbiased a view as possible.

When doing research, once one gets on the right track, drowning in information often occurs. This requires limiting the purview. Either, one skims and presents snippets or one focuses on one aspect.

For a short article or even a thesis, one would have to limit their perimeter to a particular period of time, place, or aspect, presenting a very specific document; i.e. “Slave uprisings in America before 1800.”

But to really gain an insight into almost any area of research one gets away from ‘personal’ to ‘pocket’.

Many actions were done not because of the ‘right’ reason but because of economics or political expedience.

Profit margin or political avarice is often obliterated by lofty sayings and the expression of high ideals. To be accurate, you must shove aside the ’spin’ and go for what actually pertained economically/politically at the time.

Yes, slavery is immoral, but the North abolished it because slaves were making it impossible for poor whites to find work; hence setting the stage for revolt.

The difference between research and regurgitation is that one actually incorporates brain and creativity into research.