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name_____________________________ Where this page is on the Internet
Rules of the road: 1. If you want, you can open up a Word document to write your notes instead of writing on this handout. 2. To manage what you find today, you'll probably email stuff to yourself. But, we like to support students doing research here in the classroom, so while you are here today, printing is free -- up to, say, 15 pages a person.
Before you begin researching, it is important to get oriented to the topic. This helps you think through ideas, and develop a list of the important words and phrases associated with what you want to research.
Using the Search function, you can probably identify information in CQ Researcher about your topic. What did you learn about your topic that will help shape your research? ____________________________________________________________
Other good resources:
Your notes: ____________________________________________________________
There are various ways you can narrow your topic. Think about how one or more of these frameworks might limit your topic:
With your topic somewhat formed, and some terms and phrases in mind, now you're ready to dig up some more specific information! Here's where the fun starts. Books: Use the Library's Online Catalog
You're welcome to go downstairs, pick up books and bring them back to the classroom. The library has about 25,000 electronic books (eBooks). To search only in the electronic books, do this
Information about books you found.
The world of books is expanding!!! Google is digitizing millions of books from very large libraries -- all of Stanford, all of Harvard, all of University of California, all of Oxford University in England. They just passed the 7 million book mark. Description and timeline of the Google Book Project. Book scanner video. 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.
For periodical articles, use Academic Search Premier which is a very large academic periodicals database.
From the results list, click on an article title to get to the screen with full information about it
For newspaper articles, use ProQuest Newspapers
Information about articles you found:
Web searches -- it's important to evaluate what you find! Google does what it calls blended or universal searching. When you do a Web search, Google simultaneously searches others of its databases, primarily Scholar (periodical articles) and Books (Google's database of millions of digitized books). Google now groups your results by type or some other characteristic. Click on Show Options to see!
Under Show options you might also be interested in Google's Wonder wheel -- which offers new words and phrases that are related to your topic. Try it out! Do some searching.
A lot of statistical resources are on the Web. To get to many of them
The resources you will probably use the most are under California Statistics and U.S. Government Statistics (e.g., Census Bureau). CLIKS Online Data provides regional profiles, graphs, maps and raw data on topics related to children. Want rates of teenage pregnancy by county -- that's here! Another good source is Regional Indicators Website. CREDO Reference is a single interface to about 350 specialized encyclopedias and dictionaries! From the library homepage, select Full Text Articles. Under Encyclopedias/Background information, select CREDO Reference. Here's a sample search:
Videos!! The Internet world is changing. More and more videos are available on the Web. I am not guaranteeing that you'll find good videos that relate perfectly to your topic, but you should know that thehere are zillions of videos on the Internet is there, and more every minute. Since anyone can upload videos, the quality is uneven. Sometimes, the ratings (number of stars next to a video title) help you select. The main outlets for videos on the Web are
You can use Google Books to look up chapters in books about researching and writing papers. Here are some suggestions:
Also available in the Cabrillo Library's electronic book collection is The Research Project: How to Write It -- Routledge Study Guides; 5th Ed. by Berry, Ralph. London Taylor & Francis Routledge, 2004. To get to the NetLibrary ebooks:
Information Age Skills Copy Images into Word Documents The Web is rich in images. If you copy and include the image in something you write, the origin of the image should be acknowledged. In a formal paper, write a complete citation for the source of your image. At the minimum, note the title of the Web site and the complete URL (you can just copy and paste the URL into your Word document -- Ctrl C to copy; Ctrl V to paste). Go to Getty Images or PhotoLibrary and identify an image to copy. Then follow these steps:
Your image is there. Word is not PhotoShop (an expensive software program for altering images) -- you can't really "doctor up" your image, but you can do some manipulations. You can write next to and below the image. To put text around the image -- click on the image, go to Format -> Picture. Click on Layout tab, and select the wrapping format you want. You can also, you'll note, change the size and do some other minor alterations.
Mik Moore, Topsy N. Smalley last rev.04/2010 |
