More guidelines for your research paper

Hi everyone,

Here are the notes I put on the board in class today when we were discussing the outline for your research papers. To remind you, even if you’ve already started writing I encourage you to create an outline — it will help you structure your paper and stay on track when you’re writing.

Remember that there’s lots of great writing guidelines in the Badke book, especially chapters 2 and 10 (and the Appendix).

Please email me with any questions. And remember:

I’m looking forward to reading your papers next week!
Have a good weekend,
Prof Smale

A few real-life examples of documentation

Erin’s post reminded me that I wanted to post about the three real-life examples of documentation that I showed you in class yesterday:

1. A short handout that’s available at the Reference Desk in the library that explains how to use the catalog to find textbooks on reserve in the library. We don’t have an online version of this handout so I can’t link to it here (but perhaps we should create a PDF and upload it to the library website).

2. A video tutorial that the librarians at City Tech created to demonstrate how to find journals by title using the tools on the library website. Often documentation like a manual, instructions, and guidelines is in text form (either in print or online), but sometimes documentation can be effectively presented using video and/or audio. This video is on the library website — you can watch it here.

3. The guidelines that my colleagues and I created to explain how to use Google Calendar to organize the library schedule, from Reference Desk shifts to library classes to meetings. I can’t link to this one either because it’s on our intranet: a private internal website just for library faculty and staff. Many organizations use intranets to store and maintain documentation of processes and practices of the organization, and you might need to use an intranet in your careers.

See you tomorrow,
Prof Smale

Research paper guidelines

Hi everyone, here’s a photo of the brief sketch I made in class earlier this semester of the parts of your research paper (drawn while discussing Badke p. 19) so you don’t have to write it down.

–Prof Smale

APA Style handout

Hi everyone,

Here’s a PDF version of the APA Style handout I passed around in class yesterday.

See you tomorrow — please don’t forget to bring or email your annotated bibliographies to me by the beginning of class.

–Prof Smale

Search strategies

Hi everyone, I thought it might be helpful to post a picture of the notes I took when we were discussing search strategies this week: Boolean searching (AND, OR, NOT), truncation (usually *), phrase searching (using quotes), and nesting (using parentheses). Hope this helps as you search for sources for your bibliographies.

Have a great Spring Break! I’ll see you on April 6th in the upstairs classroom (Rm A540).
-Prof Smale

Notes on the search process

Hi everyone,
I thought you might find it useful if I posted some photos of the notes I made in class yesterday about the research process:

This is the Search Process as described by Information Scientist Carol Kuhlthau (more info on her research, if you’re interested). One of the things I find most fascinating about her work is that she looks at how our emotions vary during the stages of searching and research (hence the smiley and frowny faces at the end of this list).

Here’s the other sketch I made yesterday to emphasize that, while searching and research is often described as linear, proceeding on a straight line from start to finish, it really isn’t. It’s recursive, with constant loops back depending on the results of your research. We’ll talk more about this tomorrow.

–Prof Smale

Useful Definitions

We’ll be covering a lot of ground in class tomorrow when we talk about the ethics of information use, so I thought it might be helpful to post some definitions for you to refer to. (We’ll go over this in class, too.)
See you tomorrow,
Prof. Smale

Some Terminology Relevant to the Ethics of Using Information:

Copyright:
“the exclusive right to make copies, license, and otherwise exploit a literary, musical, or artistic work, whether printed, audio, video, etc.: works granted such right by law on or after January 1, 1978, are protected for the lifetime of the author or creator and for a period of 50 years after his or her death.”

Fair Use:
“the conditions under which you can use material that is copyrighted by someone else without paying royalties ”

Public Domain:
“the status of a literary work or an invention whose copyright or patent has expired or that never had such protection.”

Academic Integrity:
“Academic Integrity is the idea of faculty and students engaging in the proces of teaching and learning with a high level of respect for each other and great attention to the values of trust, honesty, and fairness.”

Plagiarism:
“the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work.”

Open Access:
“Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. ”

Open Source:
“A method and philosophy for software licensing and distribution designed to encourage use and improvement of software written by volunteers by ensuring that anyone can copy the source code and modify it freely.”

All definitions from Dictionary.com, with the exception of Academic Integrity, which is from the Academic Integrity at City Tech page on the college website, and Open Access, which is from Peter Suber’s Open Access Overview.