Focusing
a Research Topic and
Selecting Resources
name_____________________________
First,
go to the Web page for this class:
- Go to the Cabrillo
College Library homepage http://libwww.cabrillo.edu
- Click on Web Resources by Subject
- Click on English
- Under Course-Related Materials, select ENGL 1A, College
Composition, Richey
| Make
this page a Favorite. Towards the top of your screen,
click on FAVORITES then on Add to Favorites, then on Add.
Whenever you want to come back to this page today in class, you can find it easily
by clicking FAVORITES. |
|
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How to come
up with a nicely focused topic of manageable proportions -- AND one
you can actually research!
| Narrow
your topic: three approaches |
1)
Learn more about it. One way
to refine your topic is to learn more about it -- expose yourself to
background information. As you begin to understand more about your topic,
you will see better where you might want to go with it.
| Does
your topic concern a social issue with policy implications?
e.g., immigration
| prison inmate rehabilitation | video games
| depression
Try these
for background information
|
Is
yours a more general topic?
e.g., ancient Egyptians, history of photography, turtles, Hitler
Try these for background information
CREDO Reference -- From the Library homepage, click on Articles and Databases, then on CREDO Reference
Opposing Viewpoints -- From the Library homepage, click on Articles and Databases, then on CREDO Reference
|
There
are also fine reference books on social topics. I've brought a bunch
to the classroom on a book truck. You're welcome to come see what's
there!
Here's a little checklist to see if your topic meets the requirements:
___ controversial issue on which reasonable people might disagree?
___ do you have a vested interest in the topic?
___ is the topic debatable and researchable?
___ is it of contemporary concern?
___ is it possible to interview one expert regarding the topic (I'll provide more information about that later part of the worksheet -- or click here to go there now.)
Your notes________________________________________________________________
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2)
Use a prism -- Look at the topic emphasizing one or more factors
- Location
- Time Span/Era
- Particular
Event
- Specific
Groups
- Genre/Style
Are there ways you
can narrow your topic using one or more of these factors?
Your notes________________________________________________________________
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3)
Ask questions! As
you get into your material, some questions come naturally -- Who? What?
Where? Why? How?
Who and what and where are usually easy; how and why are usually more complex.
There are different kinds of questions. For example, if your topic
were television and children, you might ask:
Fact questions
-- On average, how many hours of television has a child watched prior
to going to kindergarten?
Hypothetical
questions -- Would children actually read more if television watching
were curtailed?
Probing questions
-- Some psychologists say that watching violence is cathartic. What
has research shown about this issue?
Contrasting
questions -- Taking children in the 8 to 12 year old range, what
are the different impacts between watching violence on television
and playing violent video games?
Notes about questions
that apply to your topic:
Your notes________________________________________________________________
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Go to the Cabrillo
College Library homepage and click on Books, Videos, and more.. Look
for books on your topic. Note down titles and call numbers for those you want to find. You can go downstairs and browse the shelves to get your books.
Your notes________________________________________________________________
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Electronic
books The Library has about 18,000
electronic books from a company called NetLibrary. If you are off campus, you need your library
card number. To get to the electronic books:
-
Go
to the Cabrillo Library homepage
-
Click
on Articles and Databases
-
Scroll down a bit and click
on Net Library E-Books
What
did you find?_________________________________________
________________________________________________________
Google Books
Google is digitizing
millions of books from 27 libraries -- all of Stanford, all of Harvard,
all of University of California, all of Oxford University in England
and 23 other large, beautiful libraries. Here's video of a book scanner.
Every
single page in every book is being digitized, but not every page of
every book is available -- yet. There's a publishers' lawsuit that
restricts access to recently published titles. But information wants
to be free, I think, and it will eventually work out. Even at this stage,
there are vast amounts of full text available that it is useful to explore.
To go to Google books directly, it's books.google.com.
Example -- for the topic how to convert a car to run on alternative fuel
Use Google to find some good quality resources on your topic. Make notes here about what you find so you can return to these resources later:
Your notes________________________________________________________________
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-
Go to the Cabrillo Library homepage
-
Click
on Articles and Databases
-
On
the next screen, select a periodical database. Academic
Search Premier and MasterFILE Premier
are very large databases. Good places to start. Click to select
one of those.
-
Once
you are into the database, click to switch to the Advanced Search mode
-
Click
in the small box next to Full Text
-
Type in your search
terms. Then click on the Search button.
For example,
suppose I were looking for periodical articles about violence in video
games. My search might look like this:
Click on the article title to bring up full information about it. Note this:
Use one
of the periodical databases to identify at least one article that relates
to your topic.
Article title______________________________
Periodical
title (look where it says Source)____________________
Date of the
article_____________________
Your notes:________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
Use
National Newspapers (NY
Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington
Post, and Christian Science Monitor)
- From the Cabrillo
College Library homage, click
on Articles and Databases
- Scroll down to click on News
-
Click on ProQuest Newspapers
- Type
in your search terms
- Click
on Search
Find a full
text article about your topic and note basic information about it here
Title
of article ________________________________________
Newspaper
__________________________________________
Date
of article _________________________
Your notes:________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
You can email these
articles to yourself! And click to get them cited. Nifty!
It's important to
evaluate
Web resources. Criteria to apply:
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2.
URL____________________________
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3.
URL____________________________
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Have you ever found
information about a book that you'd like to read but (darn!) it's not
at Cabrillo? Want to know what nearby library has it? WorldCat will
tell you!
- Go to WorldCat.org
- Search for this title: Smoke and Mirrors by John Leonard
- Type in your
Zip code (If it's not already there)
What did you find
out? What nearby library has the book? Can you see where you can click to get a citation for the book?
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| Transfer
an image from the Web to a Word document |
The Web is
rich in images. Here are some sources:
Then
there are those sites where everybody publishes:
Don't
know yet how to transfer an image? It's easy!
- Select an
image from one of the above sources
- Right
click on the image. Scroll down to Copy
- Open a Word
document (if you don't already have one open) -- START -> Programs
-> Word
- Paste
the picture (File -> Paste; or, use Ctl V)
If you copy
and include the image in something you write, the origin of the
image should be acknowledged in a citation. At the minimum, give
the title of the Web site and the complete URL (you can just copy
and paste the URL into your Word document -- highlight the URL,
then Ctrl C to copy; Ctrl V to paste).
Transfer
one or two images to a Word document so that you check yourself
that you have learned this
| Video
resources you just plain should know about |
You are probably
aware that the Web now has videos galore. There are a lot of outrageous
ones, of course. But there are also lots of videos that can help
you with your studies. The main sources of videos are
| More
resources you just plain should know about |
Seeing
the world from different perspectives
LinkTV
-- high quality programming. For especially good Middle East coverage,
click on MOSAIC (on the left)
How
to Get to This Page on the Internet
-
Go
to the Cabrillo Library homepage <http://libwww.cabrillo.edu>
-
Click
on Web Resources by Subject
-
Click
on English
-
Scroll
down, and under Course-Related Materials, select ENGL 1A,
College Composition, J. Richey
Richey and T. N. Smalley 10/2010 |
Images
from Corbis.com
Accuracy