comments

"An English department member picked up a copy of A Rookie's Guide to Research at a book exhibit a number of years ago. I was very impressed with the easy-to-read format. We had been using the MLA publication, but our students found it difficult to work with. We began by buying a few—limited budget, but we were soon hooked. Now we have classroom sets in both the English and Social Studies/History Departments; the library has some for loan, and each faculty member has a copy. We encourage our students to buy their own as well. We find the Rookie's Guide to be an asset in working with research, and our students have a much easier time with it—and us!"

Sharron Horner
English Department Chairman
Nottoway High School
Nottoway, Virginia

about the authors

A Rookie's Guide to Research (MLA Guide) and Writing Research Papers (APA Guide), conceived by veteran educators Barbara Mills and Mary Stiles, enable students to become more discriminating writers of research papers. Barbara, an information specialist, holds a Master's degree in Educational Media and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Social Studies from Western Carolina University. Mary, an educational consultant, holds an Educational Specialist degree in English along with Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English from Western Carolina University.

Faced with the problem of teaching students to organize and draft a proper research paper, Mills and Stiles set out to

• gather and organize all the research tools in the same place,
• arrange them in an easy-to-use format, and
• address the research process in a clear, easy-to-follow manner.

A Rookie's Guide to Research, their first publication, leads students step-by-step through the research process. During the three years the handbook was tested, needed changes made the manual more applicable and user-friendly. The advent of digital media and the Internet required additional information to address research derived from these sources. The Rookie's Guide, now in its fourth edition, is the research manual of choice for many school systems across the United States. Many schools have adopted it as the standard tool for writing research papers across the curriculum or for using with senior projects. This manual was updated (July, 2009) to reflect MLA's changing guidelines.

In the summer of 2004, the educators wrote and published Writing Research Papers, the APA counterpart of the MLA handbook. Following the same easy-to-use format that is characteristic of A Rookie's Guide to Research, this manual is used in both high schools and community colleges. Like the Rookie's Guide, Writing Research Papers has application for cross-curriculum teaching and for senior projects. Writing Research Papers was recently updated (July, 2010) to reflect new guidelines for APA papers.