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* * English Writing Collecting Information I. Exploring data All researches are based on data. According to the source of data, researches can be classified into primary research and secondary research. Primary research is often called empirical research or field research. It is the basic means of exploring and gathering information. By primary research, the data are collected directly from the researcher’s experience or experiments. These data have not existed in any documents before. Secondary research is often called documentary or library research. It is a kind of study which makes use of data in documents, books and journals. These data have been collected by other people for their own purposes. Primary research and secondary research often walk hand in hand. In fact, neither of them can be conducted in isolation. Secondary research can only exist based on primary research, while primary research must start secondary research. Using the library At this stage, you have to visit the library many times to familiarize yourself with the location of the books relevant to your research, and to borrow and read them. Of the tens of thousands of books in the library, each has a title card, an author card and one or more subject cards in the card catalogue drawers. You can easily find the books you need, if they are available, according to the last names of the authors or the first words (disregarding the beginning A, An or The ) of the titles of books, which are all arranged alphabetically. You can also go to the subject catalogue to find out what has been written on your topic, or at least find some titles which seem to be related to your topic. Guides to reference books Whatever your interest is, you can probably find it in one of the following guides. Because these guides list other reference books or articles, a few minutes with them can be a shortcut to the books or articles that match your interests and purposes. Encyclopedias: For general background on a su