We start with the guide (handout and here) .
There’s an English 1 resource page! It’s here. There’s also a resource page for grad students in English here.
Pat’s mentioning major web sites for folks like us:
Pat’s note about searching books is a good one — check the library catalog, but for more up-to-date research, always check the journals. Searching for books — you have to be clever (more so than when searching for journal articles). Pat gives us some good subject headings to browse through. (I also search for books I know are on my topic, then click on the subject headings that book has.)
Doing a search for subject headings can also give you a nice list of related subject headings…
In Subject Heading land, remember “Higher” = higher education = College/University level.
When you pull up a long list of books on the library web page, you can re-sort the list by publication date. Pretty cool….
(Note: liveblogging sucks. It’s too hard to type and listen at the same time. Grrr…)
Moving on to keyword searching… you’ll get more results, but they’ll be less focused. But often, the shotgun approach is better than a sniper rifle. Search terms: “and” is not implied in searches, so make sure you put it in when you want 2 or more terms. Also, “or” is not assumed, either. So, if you want students AND motivation you need to type all 3 words. If you want students OR learners, you need all 3 words, too.
Truncation: it’s exciting. Seriously. On the UVM Library site, the truncation key is ? (question mark). On the MLA and Eric sites, it’s * (asterisk). So, if you’re searching for engagement or engaged or engaging, you can do all 3 searches with “engag?” on the library web site, or “engag*” in MLA and Eric. Snazzy.
Dan asks about the “bookbag.” Pat: “Don’t bother.” Instead, mark them and then e-mail them to yourself. And mark and e-mail ON EACH PAGE OF RESULTS. Don’t go to the next page because you’ll probably lose the last page’s records!
The “HISTORY” button at the top of the library search page is your best friend. It will let you go back to your previous searches.
Dan asks another great question about getting really subtle with AND and OR searches. It doesn’t make much sense to do this with the library catalog because the granularity of the library catalog isn’t fine enough. HOWEVER, it does make sense to do this with the MLA and Eric databases. They have enough keywords to allow you to do a really focused search.
Pat’s synonyms are great ideas. Searching is as much an art as it is a science. ALWAYS search 3 different ways using synonyms. You’ll be impressed with your results.
On to the journal databases. MLA:English::ERIC:Education. (That’s an analogy in symbolic form, think back to your SATs.) ERIC documents might be useful, might not. For this assignment, probably not. However, for your pedagogic research, it’s a nice resource to be aware of.
MLA goes back to 1926, and ERIC goes back to 1966. (I did not know that.)
Pat’s suggestions on how to limit your searches is right on. However, it can be useful to search through dissertation abstracts to see what people are dissertating on. Just a note…
Searching through individual journals is speedy, but sometimes you want the full view of what’s out there. (Just another note…)
Anyway, SEARCH FOR FULL TEXT is your bestest BFF ever. Seriously. The ability to pull up the full text and print it out is a godsend. And to do any of this, you need to log in to the library system. From the library home page, click on CONNECT FROM OFF CAMPUS. Then use EZ-Proxy to log in (same info as your e-mail info). If you’re using VPN Client with the university’s wireless, you don’t need to do the CONNECT FROM OFF CAMPUS thing. This is monumentally easier than things used to be when I was in your position. Harumph!
Pat’s commenting now on how the journal article titles are more involved and detailed than you see with the library book database. This is why it sometimes makes sense to get really subtle with your ANDs and ORs in your search.
If, however, you’re really stuck because you’re not getting the results you want with MLA, check ERIC. And just remember, the more restricted your search is, the fewer results you’ll get. That may sound really obvious, but it has implications. If you don’t have the time and/or energy to slog through 600 results, restrict! If you’re willing, though, you may get some good results in that quagmire. It’s up to you.
ERIC gives you a whole lot of search term boxes. You MUST MUST MUST make sure that the terms in each of your horizontal rows of boxes ARE SYNONYMS. The horziontal boxes are all separated by ORs, which means that if you have two or three different ideas to express, like “rhetoric” and “writing” and “identity”, putting any of two (or all three) of these on the SAME row will screw you up majorly. You want rhetoric AND writing AND identity, which means you have to either put them in the same box with ANDs between them, or put them on different rows with AND between them.
Pat is awesome. Don’t forget that she’s willing to help you guys one-on-one with this or other research topics. As you get more experience with grad-level research, it will become easier. But until that point, talk to your faculty (i.e., me) or research librarians like Pat. This is a set of skills you’ll need. They’re not obvious, and they’re not really like anything you did as an undergrad.
Thanks, Pat!
Posted on October 16th, 2007 by Richard Parent
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