2. Yo! I am Mr. Hand and let me say something right away: You’re not so pretty either. Now that that’s out of the way, I’m gonna show you how I used the Highlander Way Library and its print and online resources to research my assigned paper topic: LIFE ON MARS. Your job today will be to learn to do a BIBLIOGRAPHY —a list of information sources. As I show you the stuff I used to write my paper, you’ll practice doing a bibliography by listing the four sources of information I used. Don ’t freak out, man: Bibliography may be a pain in the butt, but it’s not that hard once you know a couple of tricks. Speaking of butts, you may have noticed: I don ’t even have one. Mr. Hand: Born without Butt.

3. Luckily, you’ll have a worksheet to help create your bibliography. The worksheet helps you keep track of all the information you need to make a bibliography, keeps it in order, and shows you how to correctly punctuate everything. When it comes down to crunch time, and you’re doing a real research paper, you’ll end up transferring all the information from this worksheet to a BIBLIOGRAPHY PAGE that will be the final page you’ll include in your paper. When you do that, try and make it pretty—and try to put all your citations in alphabetical order. When you're done, it should look something like… That worksheet rocks.

4. This* Look! The CITATIONS are in alphabetical order! Teacher's gonna love that! Very Neat! Super Sweet! Hey, the second and third lines are all indented about 3 spaces. That's called “Hanging Indention!” Bonus Points ! *all hands appear courtesy of Mr. Hand.

5. Are you ready for this? Good. Let's get this party started. All you'll need is your HIGHLANDER WAY BIBLIOGRAPHY FORMAT worksheet, a pencil, and a few watts of brain power. Here's how it'll go: I'll show you each of the four places I found information for my [highly above-average] research paper on LIFE ON MARS and, at the end of each one, you'll write all the information you'd need to cite that information source onto your worksheet. Take a deep breath and let's do it, brothers and sisters. Here's how I did my research...

6. First, I used the LIBRARY CATALOG. I know, it sounds lame, but that's what I did. I wanted to get a good feel for the planet Mars and what people know about it. It wasn't rocket science. I just selected SUBJECT and typed in “MARS.” It paid off like a crazy, busted slot machine. A found this little book on Mars in the non-fiction section, skimmed through it, learned about the history of what we know about the planet...and started getting ideas... I was already feeling smart. But, thirty minutes later, I was running out of time. I decided to cut to the chase... I went all the way to the back of the book—to the INDEX. I looked up the word “LIFE.” There were lots of pages listed. And that's how I found this... My research journey begins...

7. There was all this stuff in the book about how this Mars meteorite had been found with all these tiny fossils in it. The fossils looked like the pictures of magnified germs I'd seen in science class. According to the book, some scientists think the fossils are preserved bacteria. Bacteria? That's life! Yickky, dinky life, maybe, but life! My research paper was starting to take shape.. It even showed gross pictures of what some scientists think might have once been little, funky Martian life forms... Speaking of funky life forms: One time, in July, I found a wriggling herd of stanky maggots in my trash can that looked a lot like the extraterrestrial germies in that picture. .

8. And then it HIT me! That book had given me IDEAS. Ideas I knew I could use in my research paper. It was time to get bibliographic! I was ready to take down the information needed to make my very first BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATION, a record of the first information source that I'd be using for my report. I turned to the title page of the book-- a page just a couple of pages in from the cover. It had all of the stuff I needed to give proper credit to the author of the book for getting me started on my paper. Now it's your turn. Take a look at the front and back of the book's title page and see if you can use the information found there to properly fill out a citation on your bibliography worksheet. I know you can do it, dude.

9. The front of the TITLE Page... The back of the Title Page... Cite this source on your BIBLIOGRAPHY worksheet using the information from the title page-- front and back.

10. All Done? Good deal. We're rolling now. It's all downhill from here. SO: Having got that great start from a book—the stuff about the Martian fossils and everything--I thought I'd try and find some ARTICLES from reference sources, and periodicals. I knew from listening to our annoying librarian that I could find articles from magazines, subject encyclopedias and more by just going to our school library website and clicking on PRIVATE DATABASE LIBRARIES. And that's what I did.

11. Then I selected STUDENT RESOURCE CENTER, the database Mr. Hastings recommends most often for articles about almost anything we study.

12. I entered the search term “MARS” and looked to see what was available... I stayed in the REFERENCE tab because I wanted an article that would give me a basic overview of the planet Mars... There was an article about Mars from a basic level science encyclopedia. Basic? I like that. I clicked on that one.

13. The Mars article from the science encyclopedia was pretty good, but I wondered if it'd ever get around to mentioning the possibility of there ever having been life on mars...

14. Then, suddenly... THERE IT WAS ! Another source—this time an article from a science encyclopedia—was supporting what I'd read earlier: that mars might have once been home to microscopic life. It was another great source of information, so I knew that it'd also be another entry on my BIBLIOGRAPHY WORKSHEET. Get ready, y'all, to fill in another CITATION. At the bottom of the science encyclopedia article I found this: It's tough, but, can you write a bibliographic citation based on that information?

15. I was definitely getting somewhere on my research project, but I wasn’t done yet. I wanted to find a couple PERIODICAL ARTICLES to bring my research up to date. Periodicals are what library geeks call magazines and newspapers. I stayed in the database, but tabbed over to MAGAZINES AND JOURNALS… I spied a promising looking article right near the top of the hit list.

16. This turned out to be a great article that added more evidence to my growing argument that yes, there very possibly was life on Mars. Do you know where this article ORIGINALLY came from?

17. Well you know that I found the article in an online database, but it didn’t ORIGINATE there. Databases like the one I used just offer reprints of information from other sources; newspapers, reference sources, magazines and more. Here’s the original Smithsonian magazine with the article I found in the database—Mr. Hastings showed it to me. It’s important to understand exactly where your information comes from AND you’ll need to if you want to…

18. CITE the article properly! And that’s exactly what we’re about to do. Ready…GO! This information was found at the top of the article reprint…it’s all you need.

19. You may have figured this out on your own: I’m no rocket scientist. Some people are, though, like the people who work at NASA. I was interested in finding out what THEY thought about the prospect of life on Mars, so I visited their web site… On our library web site I went to SELECTED PUBLIC WEB SITES.. Then chose this NASA site:

20. Once there, I just did a quick search…

21. And came up with a nice article and a great quote to use, too. Start citing this information NOW by writing down anything you’d need for a bibliography entry. Don’t worry: There’ll be more on the next slide.

22. When you cite a web site in a bibliography, you need to try and find out a lot of stuff that might not be easy to locate, so Mr. Hastings showed me this trick… If you right click on a website page and select PROPERTIES from the drop-down menu, it’ll give you some good information for your bibliography…

23. Like it’ll tell you the title of the page, the date the site was last modified—or when you accessed it—and it’ll give the entire web address or URL… Use the information from this the web sites PROPERTIES report to complete your final BIBIOGRAPHIC CITATION.

24. Dude! You did GREAT ! You made bibliography seem like only a semi pain-in-the-butt. I salute you for that! Hey, remember: it’s natural that you’ll need help with this now and then so don’t hesitate to ask Mr. Hastings or your teacher for assistance. It can be tricky. Also, remember that our LIBRARY WEB SITE has a BIBLIOGRAPHY HELP section that covers all of the finer points of the art of citation. Plus, you can even print off a bibliography work sheet from there if you need one. Good luck on your research project, and on your BIBLIOGRAPHY. I’m out. Mr. Hand Salutes You. Copyright 2006 Jeffrey Hastings Highlander Way Middle School