College Writing for the Terrified: Academic Research from Home

1
College Writing for the TerrifiedAcademic
Research from Home
You mean you can do that?!!
2
Presented byDirected StudiesCox
Communications Academic Centerfor Student
Athletes at Louisiana State UniversityPrepared
by Charlotte Gibeson Spring 2005
3
Deciding on a Basic Topic
4
What Should a Research Essay Look Like?

• What kind of class are you taking?
• Science
• History
• Literature
• Something else entirely
• The format of the class, formal or informal,
  lecture, lab or seminar, will probably determine
  the format of the finished essay.

5
Let your homework do the hard part for you

• Read your source work thoroughly
• Make annotations
• Make a list of important themes and topics
• Jot down your own perceptions

6
Get Your Ideas onto Paper
7
What do you really think?

• Free write
• Use your notes
• Use your annotations
• Write what you think so that you know what to
  look for when you read your secondary sources

8
Books or Articles?
9
Articles are

• Shorter
• More critically focused
• Easier to find
• Received faster through Inter Library Loan

10
Books are better when

• Your topic is extensive and you need depth
• Your topic is obscure
• You just cant find articles

11
How do I find it?
12
Logging on

• http//www.lib.lsu.edu/
• On campus
• No ID required to log on
• Off campus
• 17 Digit Tiger ID number or 9 digit social
  security number
• Pass word is changeme until you change it

13
Click Indexes Databases
14
Choose a database
15
Academic Search Premiere

• Is part of EBSCO Host which
• Has many full text articles
• Is divided into professional topics
• Can be search by more than one topic at once
• Is easy to use
• Can be searched for articles held by LSU
• Also contains Business Search Premiere

16
LSU EBSCO Host Default
17
EBSCO Host Databases
18
Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA)

• Searchable by
• Arts Humanities
• Natural Sciences
• Social Sciences
• Technology

19
Ingenta

• Is geared for the serious academic researcher
• Offers abstracts of purchasable articles in
  virtually every field of research

20
JSTOR

• Contains thousands of full text articles in PDF
  format
• Searches multiple disciplines under
• Social sciences
• Literature
• Humanities
• Hard sciences

21
LexisNexis Academic

• Great for research involving
• US Government or History
• Current Events
• Legal Research
• Statistics
• Business News

22
Net Library

• Full text books on line
• Includes
• Encyclopedias
• Dictionaries
• Directories
• Handbooks
• Thesauri

23
Project Muse

• Abstracts and full text of scholarly articles
• Arts
• Humanities
• Literature
• Social Sciences
• Hard Sciences

24
Web of Knowledge

• Contains citations and some full text articles
• Can be searched by
• Hard Sciences
• Social Sciences
• Arts Humanities

25
Keep it simple, Silly!

• Start with the most basic information
• Expand results
• Using small details
• Using a large range of dates
• Limit results
• Adding small details
• To only full text or LSU articles
• Using a narrow range of dates

26
PDF or HTML?

• PDF is
• A digital copy of an article exactly as it was
  originally published, including pictures
• Can be documented just like the original document
• HTML is
• A text only copy of the original article
• Often needs special documentation
• Is more likely to be available

27
HTML
PDF
28
Print

• The final list of sources
• Detailed citations for articles that might be
  useful
• Articles you definitely plan to use

29
Researching from home is

• Convenient
• Thorough
• Simple to document
• Easy

30
The End