 My name is Jane Frye and I am a third year MLIS student here at SJSU. There is one process which I use whenever I have a research paper due for a class and I am excited to pass this tip along to you. I hope that some of you will try it and will find it helpful. Here is the agenda which I will be following. I will tell you what the tip is. I will then show you an example and finally I will tell you why I like using this process. Before I start writing a research paper, I put together a template and I add to it as needed. Every time I have a paper to write I make up a new template but I follow the same guidelines for each one. Later on I put more meat on the bones which is the actual writing of the paper itself. First I start a Word document. Next I have two types of information that make up this template. The first is APA information which comes from the latest edition of the APA publication manual. The second type of information is about the assignment itself. This is all the information that is given in the assignment description, the length, the topic, any questions that have to be answered, any hints that have been given, etc. In other words, everything that is in the assignment description. As well I include all the tips given separately in emails and discussion posts. It is important when putting this template together to place all the information in the appropriate place in the template. That is, if the prof specifies that they want keywords put in after the abstract, I put this on the abstract page. As well I put the requirement for a minimum of 10 references on the references page and so on. Now we are going to see an example. It is short, just four pages, because it is just the beginning of an actual template which I used. I did add more to it later on. As you can see, I have copied the information from my Word document into this presentation. So here is the first page of the example. It is the title page and you can see what requirements I have in there, including the length of the paper and some APA tips. The next page is for the abstract. Again, with some tips for me to use, including the length and some formatting tips. Page 3 of my template is the body of the paper. You can see where I have put in hints for each section that will help me write the paper. You will notice that I use italics for some of my tips, but not for others. Anything that will be staying in the paper, for example titles of sections, is not in italics. Once I have fulfilled the requirement of the comment in italics, I delete that comment. In that way, I ensure that I have fulfilled all the requirements for the paper. The last page of the template is the references page with my hints and the requirements from the prof. Now that I have shown you my template, I just want to wrap up by telling you why I do it. All the information I need about the assignment is at my fingertips. That is, I put it in the template so I don't need to go back to the assignment to double check it. As well, having all the requirements from the prof ensures that I don't lose or miss any marks. That is, I don't forget to answer a question and I don't forget to format the paper correctly. Writing out all of these points also helps me to understand the assignment better. And I want to mention here that using this process has helped me in every course that I have taken. Here is my contact information if you have any questions. I thank you for listening and I hope that you will use this tip of mine and that it will be as successful for you as it continues to be for me.