On Doing Research

Mythology. Fri, Jan 14th, 2011 at 11:37 am

Themes: EBSCO, Library, Research

Your goal for this assignment is to research your story or archetype, discover diverse examples, and write a paper explaining how each example differs (in moral, tone, purpose, argument, medium, etc.) while still maintaining elements of the original.

You have already chosen your stories and “verbubbled” them, reducing them to their bare essentials. At this point you should be looking around for interesting mutations of the essential story or character type. With each new source, note similarities and differences from those already on your list. We will continue our research and begin outlines next week.

As a review of what we discussed Wednesday, here is a video I made last year to help with a library research assignment for my seniors. ((For the record: I was researching “nerd culture” for a paper on Twilight. Don’t judge me…)) Commentary on the video is below.

After accessing the tulsalibrary.org, I navigate to the EBSCO databases, which is an aggregation of many peer-reviewed journals and other sources, and log in. I select “all” of the sources, but you could pick those you think will be most relevant.

(Jump to the next paragraph if you are familiar with Boolean operators in search engines.)

After searching “nerd,” it becomes clear that the term is also an acronym for “non-erosive reflux disease.” Because I didn’t want to read through 500+ articles about the disease, I include another search term, “reflux,” which isn’t likely to appear in the articles I’m looking for, and change the operator from “and” to “not.” In this way I can exclude any article that includes that word.

While I use Word to collect my notes and sources, it would be a good idea to use Google Docs instead. That way you don’t need to mess with corrupted files or remembering your flash drive.

As I read through the list, I open each article that might be valuable in a new tab. ((To do this, left-click and choose “Open in a New Tab.”)) I’m not reading them, just looking for sources at this point.

After finding 10 or so potential sources (note the number of tabs at the top of my screen), I skim through each, closing those that aren’t related to my topic. Some aren’t available online, so I close those as well. ((If you find one that seems indispensible, you can ask for an inter-library loan of the journal and pick it up in person at your local branch.))

If I find something interesting (don’t say journal, Stallings!), like you do when you’re journaling (dang.), I copy a chunk into a Word document ((You can see that I’ve already begun my outline in this example. I also remove those pesky line-breaks with a search-and-replace.)), add an in-text citation, and continue pulling information. Once I’ve decided that this will be a source I will likely use, I head over to the OWL at Purdue and look up the citation guidelines for an “Article in a Scholarly Journal that also Appears in Text.” I pop that into my Works Cited ((This example has an annotated bibliography, which requires me to explain how I used each source underneath each citation. You are not required to do this.)) and keep searching.

Rinse, repeat.

See you all Tuesday; enjoy the weekend!

Comments are closed.