The sponsor does not edit or influence the content but may have suggested
the general topic area.
You may have options within
a general topic area — say, democracy.
Within
that general topic area, you may want to choose to compare and / or contrast the types of democratic institutions in the U.S. and the UK.
Often, however, the student will be given some latitude within
a general topic area, and it becomes your task to generate your own essay topic ideas.
In some ways the nostalgia for serendipitously finding materials in a library belies a nostalgia for a time when there was more hand selection in information resources and less irrelevant or unimportant material for researchers to look at: «Perhaps the most vital system for serendipity has been the journal title, which bundled together a variety of articles in
a general topic area.»