When you're choosing a topic to research, it helps to get a solid overview before diving into the primary research. This will help you introduce the topic to your audience - it also gives you a chance to decide what aspects you want to learn more about.

You can find this in sources like:

• Reports from government departments and NGOs  (e.g., Minnesota DNR & Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme)
• Books
• News coverage
• Podcasts

You can search the UMD catalog to find books. You don't necessarily need to read a book cover to cover; often the introduction or a specific chapter will cover what you need to know.

Research articles often report on a specific study or experiment (primary sources) or describe trends within a field (secondary sources).

In biology, primary research is often published in journal articles. It's also shared in other ways, including

• conference presentations and seminars
• books
  (example: Climate Change Adaptation in Latin America)
• government and organization reports
  (example: Minnesota DNR watershed reports)
• news coverage
  (example: Washington Post analysis of NOAA climate data)

Where you search informs what kinds of primary research documents you find. For example, the DNR reports and Washington Post analysis can both be found in a Google search, while the climate change adaption book is in Springerlink.