Look beyond the usual kinds of references - Finding useful sources - Research and writing

A manual for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations, Ninth edition - Kate L. Turabian 2018

Look beyond the usual kinds of references
Finding useful sources
Research and writing

For a class paper, you’ll probably use sources typical in your field. But if you are doing an advanced project such as an MA thesis or PhD dissertation, search beyond them. If, for example, you were doing a project on the economic effects of agricultural changes in late sixteenth-century England, you might read some Elizabethan plays, look at woodcuts of agricultural life, find commentary by religious figures on rural social behavior. Conversely, if you were working on visual representations of daily life in London, you might work up the economic history of the period and place. When you look beyond the standard kinds of references relevant to your question, you enrich not only your analysis but also your range of intellectual reference and your ability to synthesize diverse kinds of data, a crucial competence of an inquiring mind. Don’t ignore a work on your topic that is not mentioned in the bibliographies of your most relevant sources—you’ll get credit for originality if you turn up good sources others have ignored.