1 Getting started: looking at academic and specialist sources

Figure 1 University students read print and online texts

In this section, you will consider first the texts you are already familiar with and then the key resources university students need to read when studying.

These resources provide the information, data, theories and evidence necessary to explore and write about your subject. For this reason, they are commonly referred to as ‘sources’. These may include written or audio-visual materials, but in this section you will focus specifically on written sources.

In order to read and use these sources effectively, it is important to know which types of source they are, what they look like and where they can be found.