- Understand the Research Process
- determine the goal of your research project
- determine the kind of information necessary to meet your goal
- popular vs. scholarly (peer reviewed)
- primary vs. secondary
- current vs. historical (or both)
- facts, commentary, criticism, report of research
- for more info, see in depth section on "World of Information"
- find background information on your topic in an appropriate source
(see #2)
- explain basic concept of citations
- refer to in-depth section on citations
- find appropriate types of information resources for your topic
- for factual information
- use ready reference sources -- (see in depth section on reference sources)
- for in-depth research on a topic
- use the library catalog and OhioLINK to identify books on your topic
(see #3)
- use research databases (or print indexes) to identify journal articles
and/or news sources on your topic (see #4)
- use the World Wide Web for additional resources, as appropriate (see
#5)
- refine your topic as you identify and review information
- broaden / narrow
- evaluate the information you find (see #6)
- in reporting your research project, give credit where credit is due
(see #7)
- Find Background Information on Your Topic
- in a subject encyclopedia or other general source
- handbooks, works that provide summaries / overviews
- for more info, see in-depth section on reference sources
- Use the Library Catalog
- follow Ohio State model
- author, word, subject searching
- call numbers and other physical arrangement in local library
- ILL and OhioLINK
- Search Research Databases
- explain concept of a database / index
- general databases and indexes
- basic and more exhaustive
- subject databases and indexes
- keyword and subject searching
- info on how to locate the journal / full text of the article
- refer to in-depth section on database searching
- So What If Somebody Had Already Done All This Work For You?
- the value of bibliographies, particularly annotated ones
- how to identify bibliographies
- limitations of bibliographies
- Using the Web for Research
- what the Web is good for, and what itís not
- Web directories - sites that organize info on the Web
- Gateway sites--for specific subjects
- search engines
- Evaluate the Information You Find
- learn how to question the place, context, and time in which information
is produced
- learn how to recognize the authority, reliability, and potential biases
of the original source of information
- work in 9 points from Danielle as appropriate
- Give Credit Where Credit Is Due
- be aware of intellectual property and basic copyright issues
- understand when sources should be credited, how to do so properly
- understand conventions of scholarly research
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- World of Information
- model on U. Washington site
- Understanding Citations
- more on concept of citations
- citations for books, journal articles, articles in books, newspaper
articles, Web resources
- Organization of Information
- classification systems
- how information is organized in local library
- Reference Sources
- value of reference works
- encyclopedias (general and subject)
- dictionaries (general and subject)
- biographical sources
- ready reference sources (almanacs, handbooks, yearbooks, directories)
- geographical sources
- Web sites as sources of factual information
- Using Databases
- database structure
- record content and structure
- software
- database searching
- basic searching
- controlled vocabulary vs free text
- basic Boolean operations
- advanced searching
- using a thesaurus
- limiting
- stopwords
- advanced Boolean concepts (adjacency, proximity, nesting)
- Terminology
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