Introduction to Library Research

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Introduction toLibrary Research

• Part 1
• The research process
• and searching strategies

Oct. 2008
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What is research anyway?

• Research is a PROCESS
• Step 1 Choose a topic
• Step 2 Exploratory research
• Step 3 Working bibliography
• Step 4 Research question / tentative thesis
• Step 5 Focused research
• Step 6 Final thesis

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Choose a topic

• Understand the assignment
• Pick a topic that interests you
• Start general
• Even if you have a specific idea for your project
  or have already thought of a research question,
  back up and think of the general topics that
  describe it
• Brainstorm What makes someone popular? Like a
  leader or a celebrity?
• Topic Charisma

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Choose a topic

• By beginning your research with general ideas,
  you will be in a better position to explore
  potential avenues of focused research without
  getting yourself stuck in one possible research
  path.
• The importance of this will become clearer as we
  go through the next steps of research.

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Exploratory research

• Read some basic works on your topic
• Reference materials, textbooks
• Use your topic term(s) in your search
• A basic search on charisma to shows us a
  selection of whats been written on the topic
• Get ideas for future searches
• Psychology? Personality? Leadership?

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Exploratory research

• Exploratory research has many purposes. It helps
  you
• Get a basic understanding of your topic, so that
  you may intelligently refine your research
  question
• Start gauging the scope of your topic.
• Its a good idea to see if your topic is
  feasible before you get too involved with your
  research!
• There may be so much written on your topic
  you
• will never fit it all in one class paper
• OR it may be really hard to find information
  on your topic.
• Its not cheating to adjust your topic to
  make it feasible.
• Get ideas for what you want to search for
• i.e. ideas for keywords, topics, sources
• to look for

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Use your sources correctly

• Articles
• Focus on Abstract, introduction, conclusions
• These should give you enough info to understand
  the article and get the data from the findings.
  If you have a 50 page research article, you can
  skim much of the methodology and statistical
  discussion to save time.
• E-books
• Search the book for relevant material
• You dont have to read the whole thing!
• But DO read enough to UNDERSTAND the CONTEXT

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Working Bibliography

• As soon as you find any sources that you might
  use in your research, start a bibliography and
  get in the practice of making proper citations
  for everything right away.
• Why?
• Need citations later anyway
• Harder to lose your work
• Easier to go back (to check info, for citation
  chasing)

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Working Bibliography

• Jung, D.,  Sosik, J. (2006 Summer) Who are the
  spellbinders? Identifying personal attributes of
  charismatic leaders.  Journal of Leadership
  Organizational Studies, 12(15),
  12. Retrieved January 17, 2007, from Expanded
  Academic ASAP via Thomson Gale.
• Conger, J., Kanungo, R. Menon, S. (2000
  November) Charismatic leadership and follower
  effects. Journal of Organizational Behavior,
  21(7), 747. Retrieved Dec 11, 2006 from ProQuest
  Psychology Journals.

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Research Questionand Tentative Thesis

• Even if you started your process with a question
  to find your topic (like in our example What
  makes someone popular?) you should come back
  after some introductory research and reform your
  research question.
• This gives you the chance to re-think your
  question into something more specific that fits
  the scope of your research.

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Research Questionand Tentative Thesis

• Your research question should be open ended.
• The point of the research project is to answer
  this question, and this early in the process you
  usually wont have enough info to answer it
  properly.
• What you should have is enough information for a
  tentative thesis. This is your best guess of a
  possible answer to your research question. The
  research you will do next will see if you can or
  cannot support your tentative thesis.

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Research Questionand Tentative Thesis

• Here are a possible research question and
  tentative thesis for the charisma topic
  example.
• Compare
• Research question
• What makes a leader charismatic?
• Tentative Thesis
• Leaders are charismatic when they are perceived
  as representative of their group

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Does that sound like a lot of work?

• Did you get depressed when I got to the fourth
  step, yet said we were still early in the
  research process?
• Well dont be scared in reality, you could
  easily go through steps 1-4 in an afternoon.
• The heavy-duty work comes next

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Focused Research

• Answer your research question and refine your
  tentative thesis with specific information
• With the charisma example, we might look for
• Case studies of charismatic leaders
• Research papers on personality
• Scholarly psychological analysis
• Facts, figures, statements from authorities

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Focused Research
This is the bulk of the research work, and what
most people imagine when they think of
research. This is where you will spend time
hunting for the right articles, browsing through
books, getting help from the librarian, etc.
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Final Thesis

• After focused research, you will have enough
  information to confidently answer you research
  question, have arguments to support your thesis
  and will pretty much know what your are going to
  put in your paper.
• At this time, you can take your tentative thesis,
  revise it to better reflect your findings, and
  settle on your final thesis statement.

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Final Thesis

• Charismatic leaders share the characteristics of
  being perceived as representative of their group
  and proactive concerning the groups best
  interests
• Again, this often doesnt finalize until you are
  working on your rough draft.

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Final Thesis

• Hey! What if the facts you find in your research
  DONT support your thesis, or answers the
  research question in different way than you
  expected? Is the entire project trash?
• Nope! Just make the argument of your research
  that your thesis is NOT true this is a
  perfectly OK thing to do. Not every research
  paper has to prove that something is lots of
  research proves that something is not the answer.
• Example Research question Is hypnosis a good
  weight loss strategy?
• Tentative thesis Hypnosis helps you lose weight.
• Research shows Hypnosis has never been proven
  to aid weight loss.
• Final thesis I have explored the possibility
  that hypnosis is a good weight loss strategy, and
  found that several medical studies show hypnosis
  to have no effect on weight loss or dieting.

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In sum

• Start with a question or general idea
• Research to find information, facts
• Build thesis statement that is based on reality
  (the information that you found)

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THIS IS BACKWARDS

• Brainstorm a specific thesis right away
• Decide your arguments for the paper
• Start writing your paper
• Now start your research!
• 5. Despair and sorrow ?

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Tragedy of Backwards Research

• You might find
• No facts to support your arguments
• Lots of data that disproves your thesis
• Research may partially support your thesis, but
  not with the arguments you had planned (and
  started writing out)
• You Rewriting your paper

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OK!

• Lets research!

23
Matsushita is the largest manufacturer of
electrical consumer goods in the world
www.sba.gov
James Knox Polk was born in Mechlenburg County,
NC on Nov. 2, 1795.
Begin the endnotes on a new page after the last
page of the paper and preceding the bibliography.
www.google.com/unclesam
651681606546465404 65354
Vibrissae stiff hairs within the nostrils at the
anterior nares
Epoetin Alpha Trade and other names Epogen,
epoetin alfa. Drug class hormone.
FEELING OVERWHELMED BY INFORMATION?
www.msbcollege.edu
3541651035466 4384 654 6 364 3541
156846843516553131354321 6541321651
by emphasizing different components of the
syllogism covered in section A.
Alveolitis inflammation of the alveoli
Certosina a style originally associated with
Carthusian monasteries, made with pieces of wood,
bone and mother-of-pearl arranged in geometrical
patterns
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No need to panic!
25

• Make sense of the information overload!
• Plan your search
• Use the Research Project Calculator
  http//rpc.elm4you.org/
• Have several options and enough time
• Be creative!
• Discover synonyms and related terms
• Find these in your preliminary research
• Choose the right research tool
• Match the sources to the topic
• Look for recent news on the web or newspapers
• Look for scholarly info in a database

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3 Ways to Search

• Subject Searching
• Citation Chasing
• Keyword Searching

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Types of searching

• Subject Searching
• Whats the secret word?

Databases and catalogs have indexes of words that
their search already knows Using the Subject
Index will help you

• Find the most efficient search terms for that
  resource
• Get ideas for new search terms to try

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Heres an example of subject searching in one of
our library databases.
But were going to ignore it and press this
Subjects button at the top.
Heres the regular search box
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charisma
We can enter our example topic charisma into
this browse box what this does is ask whether
the database knows that term or not.
This brings us to the subject index the
alphabetical listing of all the terms this EBSCO
database knows. Again, these terms are used by
the database to describe main topics of the
articles in the database. So anything we see on
this list, we know the database has at least one
article on that topic.
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Looks like there are a LOT of subject index terms
that contain the word charisma! Even better,
if we scroll down the list, we can learn
something...
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But even better, we dont have to go back to any
search box or type anything in to do our next
search.
There is an entry for Charisma (Personality
trait) in the list and its easy to see that
this the term we would want to use for our topic.
However, I wouldnt have guessed thats how
EBSCO differentiates our charisma topic from
all the other Charismas out there (brand names,
titles, etc.) But by using the subject index, we
easily learned that this is how to search for
charisma here.
So we can go straight to those 176 academic
journal articles just by clicking here.
These links under charisma do two things 1) they
tell us exactly how many articles of each type
they have on the topic and 2) they are direct
links to these lists of articles!
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It does the search for us automatically!
Side note Services that have subject headings
will often show suggested subject links along
with your search results. This is another way to
take advantage of subject searching.
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Coming back to the subject index Another way to
take advantage of subject searching is to look
for links like this when you are in the subject
index.
Looking at related terms in the subject index can
give you more ideas for other searches.
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Depending on what direction we want to take our
research
35
we could keep following links through the
subject index, seeing lists of articles on other
topics, or
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getting even more ideas for searches and topics
to try.
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Subject Searching

• These are all ways to search by subject
• Search the subject index
• Some databases offer subject suggestions. Click
  on these to access the subjects.
• Or click on subject headings in your search
  results or in the article record.

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Subject Searching

• And remember, the demonstration was in one
  particular database, but most academic research
  tools use subject headings.
• This includes many of the library databases, our
  library catalog (and other libraries, too) and
  even some good research websites.

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Types of searching

• Citation chasing
• Please sir, can I have some more?

If youve found one great article or book on your
topic, that one item may be able to lead you to
more
Check the bibliography of the source you have
could you find and use any of their cited sources?

• Pros of citation chasing
• Authors usually cite sources that discuss
  similar topics
• Youll have all the information for easily
  searching the databases

• Con of citation chasing
• No guarantees that the cited sources will also
  be in available online in the GU/MSB library

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Types of searching

• Keyword
• Okay does ANYTHING mention left-handed
  Indonesian stunt kites?

• Always remember
• Keyword searching usually looks everywhere for
  your search terms, including author names,
  summaries and sometimes even full text of article
  (book, website, etc.)
• Keyword searching by default is kind of stupid
  (unless we help it out)

Heres an example
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Potential problemsof keyword searching

• Say you are researching cats, as in
• A basic keyword search on cats
  would probably give
• you a some results that would actually be about
• But if some authors last name was Cats, youd
  also get whatever
• articles he wrote, even though they
  may be about new
• socket gears
  or something unrelated to

CATS
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Potential problemsof keyword searching

• And what about
• Reviews of Cats the musical?
• Excerpts from the book Cats Cradle?
• Or writers using the word just once in an
  article, like in a saying or cliché The cats
  out of the bag Apple introduced its new iPhone
  today at

All of this could come up when justkeyword
searching on cats
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The Good News about Keyword

• However, keyword searching can be very useful in
  situations when you are
• Using specific terminology
• Building specific search strings
• Need to search full-text
• Need to do any sort of broad search

Okay - does ANYTHING mention left-handed
Indonesian stunt kites?
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Keyword Word Choices

• Word choices are important
• Be selective. Choose descriptive words.
• Strategies
• Brainstorm
• Select from thesis
• Broader, narrower, and related words
• Time, Place, Population, and Viewpoint
• Trial and error

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Strategies Brainstorming Keywords

• How many keywords can you think of that are
  related to the movies?

Stop the slideshow for a moment. Get out a piece
of paper. Write down anything that would be a
keyword related to the movies. Yes,
seriously. You should be able to get at least 20!
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Identifying Search Words

• Its good to have options so you can try
  different terms in different databases
• Say your topic is The economic impact of the
  great dust storms of the 1930s on the farmers of
  the great plains.
• What are the important terms here?

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Identifying Search Words

• The economic impact of the great dust storms of
  the 1930s on the farmers of the great plains.
• Using the word impact alone is useless. Its
  not descriptive enough of the topic.
• Using agriculture instead of farmers is a good
  option. Brainstorming for search terms is a good
  idea.

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Broadening or Narrowing Keywords

• Notice that some are broader or narrower
  keywords. Others are related.
• Heres another example
• These can help you in your searching. For
  example, If you cant find a book about fruit try
  a broader term like agriculture there may be a
  chapter about fruit in a book about agriculture.

Fruit
Agriculture
Apples
Canning
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Strategies

• Use quotation marks for phrases
• total quality management
• right to choose
• macaroni and cheese
• Truncation - check the help screen in the
  database or search engine for the appropriate
  truncation symbols
• Symbols ( ? !) take place of letters
• Politic politician, politicians, political,
  politics
• Wom?n woman, women
• Combining with Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT

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Boolean Operators AND

• AND makes your search more specific
• AND narrows the search
• The more ANDs you add the more specific/narrow
  your search will be
• children AND anxiety ? only items with both terms

Children in Iowa
Anxiety in Iowa
Anxiety in Children
Anxiety is Okay
Children in Anxiety
Children are Okay
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Boolean Operators OR

• OR broadens the search
• The more ORs you include the more broad your
  search becomes
• wages OR salaries ? items with either term

Wages for Mediocre Work
Salaries of Good Salesmen
Getting Paid to Sleep
Can you see why these two werent chosen?
Dogs Earn Salaries
Raise Your Wages
Minimum Wage
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Boolean Operators NOT

• NOT excludes unrelated terms
• e.g. jazz NOT Utah ? leaves out items about the
  Utah Jazz basketball team

NOT is rarely used because it could exclude
things you need, like jazz music played in the
state of Utah
2004 Utah Jazz Lineup
Jazz Through Time
Music Is Nice
History Of Utah Jazz
History of Jazz Music
Music Weekly Jazz Scene in Utah
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Boolean Operators

• Combine these as much as you need
• Cats AND declaw AND humane
• A more specific search
• Gender AND (movies OR film)
• Would return both Gender in the movies
• and Film is blind to gender and etc.
• Get fancy!
• (Gender OR women) AND (movies OR film) NOT adult
  film
• This would be a good search for people interested
  in womans gender issues in the movie business
  outside of X-rated genres.

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Refine AKA Do it Again!

• Too much? Narrow it!
• Specific terms
• Quotation marks
• AND, NOT
• Too little? Broaden it!
• Broader terms
• Synonyms
• OR
• All wrong?
• Try a different database/search tool/source
• BE CREATIVE brainstorm more keywords
• Ask the librarian for help!

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Stay tuned for Part 2

• Using the MSB Online Library and Evaluating
  Sources

Questions? Comments? Contact the Online
Librarian Elaine Settergren
esettergren_at_msbcollege.edu http//students.msbco
llege.edu/library/onlinestudents/