Using academic libraries for sixth form study
Once you have identified good quality academic resources on your topic, and have carried out extensive reading, you will have to decide what will be useful for your assignment. A key part of this process involves extracting from texts the key messages and ignoring details, which may be interesting, but not useful for the task you have to do.
To do this, you may want to adopt a consistent method to take notes from your reading. For instance, you may want to follow the suggestions in the table below. Making good quality notes, in your own words, will allow to both synthesise information and consolidate your understanding:
| Source 1 (publishing details) | Source 2 (publishing details) | Source 3 (publishing details) | |
| Summarise the theme of the source | |||
| What is the author's argument? | |||
| List three or four points made by the author to support this argument. Provide ideas, facts or findings from the text which supports each point selected |
More information on note-taking can be located in the related links