You can get ideas for a research topic from your own experiences, your class textbook, and popular magazines and newspapers. Once you have an idea, start conducting pre-search using the library's reference collection to browse dictionary and encyclopedia articles on your basic idea. Google and Wikipedia can also be help you get a baseline understanding for a topic, but be careful about which sources you use. (Hint: Wikipedia is not a good source to use in a research paper because anyone can edit the articles.)