Record Your Research - Keeping organized research notes will help your research go smoothly and help with your annotated bibliography. Remember to use quotation marks to record exact words or phrases so you can remember which words are yours and which words came from the original source. NHD Minnesota has an excellent student research workbook.
Start with Secondary Sources - Although it is tempting to jump right into locating primary sources, it's best to start with secondary sources. NCpedia, ANCHOR, and the NC Highway Historical Marker Program are trustworthy secondary sources that can lead you to reliable references and primary sources.
Filtering is Your Friend - Use filters on databases, digital collections, and other sites to narrow your search results and find what you seek. Filtering search results for specific locations, years, and types of materials can help you find the most relevant information more quickly. Unfiltered searches can return results that do not relate to your research topic, which can be overwhelming and waste valuable research time.
Let "Library Language" Help You - Libraries and Archives use special "controlled vocabularies" when cataloging their materials. When you find something about your research topic, pay attention to the subjects, taxonomies, and other "library language" used to describe the resource. You can often click on the "library language" to find related materials.
Research Returns "Rabbit Holes" - The more you research, the more you learn. And the more you learn, the more you realize there is more information than any human could ever know or include in their NHD research. It's okay to adjust your research focus as you learn more, but beware of falling down rabbit holes that lead you away from your research focus.
National History Day's Finding, Analyzing, and Constructing History: A Research Guide for Students has tons of information to help NHD student researchers with their projects.
NHD's research skill collection can help you with topics including how to effectively use Wikipedia, how to conduct an oral history interview, and guidance on using AI tools during your NHD project.
Minnesota History Day (MHD) offers many resources to support NHD students from any state. MHD's helpful resources include their student research guide, general citation guide, bibliographies made easy, and all about annotations.
National History Day® requires an annotated bibliography for all projects. Annotated bibliographies are different from works cited pages or reference lists in that they require the author to explain and evaluate their sources.
Check out the NHD Annotated Bibliography Guide for more information.
NHD allows student researchers to use MLA or Chicago citation styles. Historians most often use Chicago-style citations, but many schools use MLA. Check with your teacher to see which citation style you should use.
The Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS) can help you format your citations and annotated bibliography. The CMoS is available anywhere in NC with a SLNC Government and Heritage Library Card. You can also access CMoS via NCLive through your local public library.
NoodleTools and Zoterobib are free, high-quality citation generators for both MLA and Chicago-style citations. Always check any generated citations against the guidelines.