Chapter 4: COR100 LIT:
 
"Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing."

Werner von Braun
German- Born American Rocket Scientist
from The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations

Lyon College
Mabee-Simpson Library
Week 4, exam by Midnight, Sunday, Sep 25, 2005


Your Research Library at
Lyon College

Picking a Topic

  • Your professor may assign you a topic.
     
  • If he doesn't, you can discuss ideas with him or in your class about possible topics.
     
  • If that doesn't work, try clicking on the Current topics  link on the library's page.   These links can give you ideas about what other people are writing about right now.
     
  • Browse through the library's weekly magazines on the rack in the front lobby.  They are full of ideas.
     
  • You can also check out the Reference 24/7 link on the library's page.  Click on this link and then click on the Oxford Reference Collection.  This is a collection of reference matierals that can give you a quick summary of any topic you are interested in.
     

For your quiz, I'll ask you about ways to choose topics.

 

What Kind of Material Will You Use?

 

  • Primary sources
    This is a document containing firsthand information.  Examples of primary sources include diaries, memoirs, letters, journals, photographs, film footage, interviews, public records, newspaper clippings, etc.  Our databases such as LexisNexis and JSTOR contain many such primary sources.
     

  • Secondary sources
    Secondary sources are any works that are one step removed from the original source, usually describing, summarizing, analyzing, evaluating or derived from primary source materials.  Books and journal articles are typical of this class and what many students use.  We have about 150,000 books and lots of magazines and journals that are secondary sources.

For your quiz, you'll have to know the difference between
Primary sources and Secondary.

 

Do we Have Enough  Primary and Secondary Material for your Paper?

  • One student last semester wanted to write a paper on Disney's Animation Process from start to finish.  After consulting with me, he decided he needed lots of primary materials that could only be borrowed from out-of-state.  He didn't have enough time before the paper was due to get the materials so he changed his topic.   

 

 

Journals or Magazines?  There is a Difference.

 

  • Peer-reviewed, Juried, Refereed Articles?
    This is a a scholarly journal that requires an article to be subjected to a process of critical evaluation by one or more experts on the subject, known as referees responsible for determining if the subject of the article falls within the scope of the publication and for evaluating originality, quality of research, clarity of presentation, etc. Changes may be suggested to the author(s) before an article is finally accepted for publication.  Examples of scholarly, or peer reviewed journals are: Journal of the American Medical Association, The American Journal of Psychiatry, etc.  Scholarly journals usually have the word "journal" in the title.  These juried articles usually have a bibliography and a list of references so you can read more about their topic.
     
  • Magazine Articles?
    The magazine is a popular interest periodical usually containing articles on a variety of topics, written by various authors in a non-scholarly style. Most magazines are heavily illustrated, contain advertising, and are printed on glossy paper. Articles are usually short (less than five pages long), frequently unsigned, and do not include a bibliography or list of references for further reading. Some examples are:  Newsweek, People, Time, U.S. News and World Report, Rolling Stone, etc.

For your quiz you will have to know the difference between [peer-reviewed, juried, refereed, scholarly articles] and magazines.

 

Past or Present Info

  • If your paper is about current topics, check and see if we have enough information.  Most of our databases are updated daily, and some by the hour.
     
  • If your paper is about historical events, check and see if we have enough sources before you commit to a paper.  We do have some excellent historical electronic databases and print titles.  The Newspaper Database "LexisNexis" covers a wide span of years, and we have the historical "New York Times" and the Wall Street Journal" full-text from their beginnings in 1851 and 1889 respectively.  "JSTOR" also has complete runs of journals, full-text, online.

 

 

Narrowing Your topic

  1. Suppose I fish around for the topic: Feral Cats. In Academic Search Premier I found 120 hits about Feral Cats.  I was overwhelmed by the pro's and con's of saving or killing Feral Cats in these titles.  There was too much.
     

  2. I picked one article I was really attracted to and looked for key words in the article that might lead me to other articles of the same nature.  I found:
     

    1. Animal Rights

    2. FERAL cats

    3. FERAL mammals

    4. Quality of life

    5. Vaccination of Animals

    6. Animal welfare
       

     

  3. I combined cats and animal welfare in a search.  This narrowed my hits to 16 articles about helping the cats.  What did I just do?  I looked for one article I really liked (defining my topic)  and got keywords from it.  I combined those with FERAL cat and narrowed my search.
     

  • For your quiz you may have to narrow a topic that I assign to you.
     

 

"And" Narrows a topic search

Anytime you want narrow a search in just about any database, you can "and" your ideas.  "And" will narrow your search. If I combined cats and dogs in a search in Academic Search Premier, the diagram below shows you that I would only get a small segment of material that contained both cats and dogs.  The blue color is all I would get.  The same thing applies to FERAL cats and animal welfare.

 

 

 

 

Broadening a Topic

  1. Suppose I was looking for a book about FERAL cats in iLink, our library catalog.  If I typed in FERAL cat I get the message: "Item Not Found, Perhaps the following list will help."  I get zip. Nada. Nothing.
     

  2. I have to broaden my topic by leaving off FERAL.  A search for cats gets me all the books we have in the library, and none of them deal with FERAL cats. 
     

  3. In this case, I have to go somewhere else for books.  I would pick the database WorldCat, an international database of books.  I found lots of books in WorldCat.   But then I have to Inter-Library Loan them, meaning I had better get on with my project ASAP because it takes up to two weeks to get inter-library loan books.
     

  • For your quiz I may ask you to broaden some searches for me and tell me about your results.
     

"Or" Broadens a Topic Search

Anytime you want to broaden a search in just about any database, you can "or" your ideas.  "Or" will broaden your search. The diagram below shows what happens when when "or" is used.  Dogs or cats get all the material about cats and all the material about dogs and all the material that has both cats and dogs.

 

 

Finding a Book from a Citation

The citation below is a book cite.  Why?  You start with an author.  There is only one title, and you get the publisher and the pub date.  You would go to the books link and click on iLink, type in the title: Liberty!: The American Revolution to see if we have it.

 

Fleming, Thomas. Liberty!: The American Revolution. New
 
York: Viking, 1997.

 

 

 

Finding a Journal Article From a Citation

 

Brown, Erella. "The Lake of Seduction: Silence, Hysteria, 
 
and the Space of Feminist Theatre." JTD: Journal of
Theatre  and Drama  2  (1996):  175-200.

 

The cite above is a journal article.  Why?  Again, you start with an author.  But look, there are 2 titles.  One is the name of the article in the journal: The Lake of Seduction.... and then there is the name of the journal which is underlined: JTD: Journal of Theatre and Drama.  Then you have a volume number, the published year, and the page numbers. 

 

Here's how you find the electronic or paper copy:



Go to the library's homepage at: library.lyon.edu and then click on the Journal Articles link.












 

 



Then click on Full-Text Electronic or Paper Journals.
















Punch in the title of the journal into the search box.  If we own it, it will give the links to follow to get it.  I typed in: JTD: Journal of Theatre and Drama in their search box like this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's what I got.  What now?  Well, we don't have it.  Time for Inter-library loan, or drop this cite and find something that we do have. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's an example of what it looks like when we do have a title.  I searched for American Theatre by going to the library's homepage at library.lyon.edu, then to the Journal Articles link and then to the Full-Text Electronic or Paper Journals.  Here's what the search looks like:

 

 

This is on the library's page at: library.lyon.edu.  Click on Journal Articles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is at the Journal Articles page.  Click on Full-Text Electronic or Paper Journals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I typed in American Theatre in the top search box.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the result!  There are 2 titles here.  The first gives you the list of electronic databases that contain American Theatre, along with the dates we have.  I can click on any of these links and search for what I need, knowing that we have 1995 to the present for the first 3 links, and from 1994 to the present in ProQuest Research Library Complete. The second title is the paper copy that we have in the library.  It tells me that we have American Theatre from 1987 to the present in print in our building.

 

 

For your quiz, be prepared to conduct a search in the Full-text Electronic or Paper Journals link for me for a certain journal title and to tell me what range of years we have for the electronic and/or paper editions. 

 

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