Introduction to Research 

In this lesson, you will complete a research project. Penn State has one of the top-10 research libraries in the United States (Penn State News, 2015). This fantastic resource is available to you as a student of the World Campus. One of the goals of the research assignment is to help you to become familiar with some of the available resources.

Library Resources

In your project, you are asked to write a tax memo where you will need to do research, arrive at a solution, and communicate tax research to a client. The course reserve for this lesson, Understanding and working with the federal tax law, outlines a five-part process to follow in writing a tax memo, consisting of

• identifying the problem,
• locating the appropriate tax law sources,
• assessing the validity of tax law sources,
• arriving at the solution or at alternative solutions, and
• communicating tax research. 

You can access this reading via Library Resources in course navigation (see Figure 14.1).

 

Accounting Guide

The accounting guide (Figure 14.2) is a Penn State Libraries resource specifically geared to the types of research and specialized databases you may encounter as an accounting professional. Through this page, you have access to the Penn State business librarian who can help you with these resources, if needed, and you can access specialized databases and materials for this assignment. The accounting guide may also be accessed through the Penn State Libraries home page or through Library Resources in course navigation by selecting Accounting - a guide to resources for accounting research (see Figure 14.1).