The Information Cycle addresses how information changes over time. Typically, you have selected a starting point or an exigence. From there, you are trying to find information resources (news, journal articles, books, podcasts, interviews, social media, blogs, etc.) that relate initial information (immediate, hours) and information with more context and nuance (days, weeks) and eventually information that contains more analysis, data, and big-picture evaluation (months, years, decades).
The English 102 Research Guide has a helpful chart with more information for each of the categories and some examples of sources you could look for. The library has access to many of these sources, like newspapers (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, New York Times, Washington Post), news magazines (The Atlantic, TIME, National Geographic), and scholarly journals (A-Z Database list) and books (Search@UW).
Remember - your sources do not need to be from the library - your stakeholders may have publications available outside of the library. Select sources that are appropriate to your issue and stakeholders.
Your sources can reference the broader concept of your topic - i.e. your exigence is about Summerfest, your “decade” source could be a research article about the history of festivals in Milwaukee.
This FAQ is for Milwaukee campus English 102 students.
