LibrarySkills@UCL

When you start working on academic assignments, you will need to look for information beyond your reading lists. 

Our Assignments pages help you develop your library and information skills so you feel confident in finding, evaluating, referencing and managing the sources you use to inform your academic work.

When you are faced with your first assignment, where do you start? This section will introduce you to:

• Defining your topic and keywords
• Identifying resources

When you are carrying out a thorough search for your assignment, you might need to use more advanced techniques to focus your search. This section covers:

• Search techniques, such as phrase searching, truncation, and building an effective search;
• Using Explore;
• Google Scholar.

How do you know that you are using the right sources for your assignment? You will need to think about:

• How to assess the resources you're using for quality and value;
• Whether resources are authoritative in certain contexts;
• Evaluating different sources for relevance and reliability.

When using other people's work to inform your assignment, it is critical that you understand how to acknowledge your sources and to cite and reference correctly. This section will cover:

• How to stay organised and manage the sources you've used;
• Understand how citing and referencing contributes to academic integrity;
• Sources to help you cite and reference correctly.

At university you should develop an understanding of the best ways to communicate information. You should be able to synthesise information from different sources and present that information in the format required for your assignment, whether it's a presentation, essay, lab report, or other format.