Credible Sources

I promised you a post on credible sources, so here it is. Your imaginary teacher assigned you an imaginary four-page research paper about American involvement in World War II.

Let's take a moment to talk about all that research you're going to be doing. My co-partner has a sort of Golden Rule when it comes to research papers - one hour for every page. Oh my gosh, you might be thinking. There's no way I'm going to be spending four hours on this paper before I've even started writing it! First of all, relax. That rule applies more to college-level papers than the papers your average high school student is going to be writing. I would cut that number in half for you and say that you'll need to spend a good two hours researching for this paper.

So, what kind of research do you want me to do? You might ask. Let's go over the kind of research you aren't going to be doing first.

When you google World War 2, 519,000,000 results come up. You aren't going to be using the vast majority of them. You also aren't going to be using the first result, which looks something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II

That's Wikipedia. Wikipedia is good for a great many things. If you need to find out whether your cat is an American shorthair or a Toyger, Wikipedia is your go-to guy. If you need to settle a bet with your best friend, Wikipedia is the way to go. If you need to find out what that new TV show you've been hearing about lately is all about, Wikipedia is your best shot. But if you need to write a high school research paper, Wikipedia is a fast-track to an angry teacher and a big fat C- (or worse!)

Moving on. Now that we've established that Wikipedia is a definite NO, what about this site: http://www.worldwar-2.net/

That's a .net site. It's good for getting a general idea of what the war was about, but that's about it. Use it to get into the researching mood, but don't bookmark it to cite.

Now we're going to get into the kinds of site you can use. Take a look at this one: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005137

That's a website from the United States Holocaust Museum. While it's not exactly about American involvement in WWII (which is what your paper is about, remember), it is managed by a museum and was probably written by WWII scholars. These are the kinds of sites you're going to want to research from and cite.

That's a .org site, though. It's still not your best bet if you want to be absolutely sure you're getting the most accurate information available. For that, you're going to want to go to .gov and .edu sites. Government managed sites and those run by universities are some of the most credible sources out there, and should be your go-to research domains.

A government site: http://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww2/

A .edu site: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraID=15&smtid=1

You also want to use a couple of primary sources in your essay. Good luck!