ENG 106: Composition 2

Lesson 10: Library Research
Week: March 24-30, 2003

Place: Sampson-Livermore Library

Objectives

By the end of this lesson, you should be able to do each of the following:

Find subject encyclopedias and other monographs in a library.
Use a database to search for articles in periodicals.
Use a citation to locate an article in a periodical.
Define relevant terms.

Assignments

Read two encyclopedia articles and two book chapters before you come to class on Thursday. Take notes on these sources and place them in your outline.

Read two articles in scholarly periodicals before you come to class next week. Take notes on these sources and place them in your outline.

Activities

Think Fast: Using what you have learned in this lesson and previous lessons, draw up a research plan for your proposal. Include a list of primary and secondary sources where you might information on your topic.

Presentation: Monographs (Librarian)

Cooperative Learning: Collaborate with a partner to find subject encyclopedias and other monographs on your topic.

Discussion: During this time, we will discuss the insights and questions that have emerged during our “Think Fast” exercise, my presentation, and cooperative learning.

Workshop: Using what you have learned in this lesson, locate at least two relevant, credible articles on your topic in scholarly periodicals.

Think Again: Compile a bibliography of at least 10 sources for your proposal.

Conferences: During these one-on-one conferences, I will review some of your writing, orally quiz you on lesson objectives, and field your questions.

Announcements: We will wrap up this lesson with announcements regarding upcoming lessons, as well as other relevant subjects.

Terms

Make sure you know the meaning and significance of each of the following terms:

bibliography
Boolean operators
database
interlibrary loan
keyword
library
Library of Congress call number
monograph
periodical
print source
source
subject encyclopedia

Resources

Sampson-Livermore Library is UNCP’s main library and a perfect place for you to begin research on wide variety of topics. Along with thousands of subject encyclopedias and other items in its reference collection, it has hundreds of thousands of monographs in its general collection and a variety of periodicals.

Introduction

In our last lesson, we examined various kinds of evidence, and you began setting up your own interview, survey, or observation. In this lesson, we will begin our exploration of library research. Please meet in the reference section of Sampson-Livermore Library on both Tuesday and Thursday of this week.

Discussion

Using a Library

College professors share a lot of information with their students through lectures and reading assignments, but they also expect students to find, evaluate, and use information on their own. In fact, learning to gather information effectively should be one of your major goals while in college. Once you know how to find information, you can make much more educated decisions about your career, politics, finances, and other aspects of your life and the world. Indeed, knowing how to conduct research is one way of extending your education beyond college. You can build a strong foundation now by learning how to find sources in a library.

Libraries hold thousands or even millions of print sources: books, periodicals, government documents, and other materials that appear in hard-copy form. Despite the lure of the Internet, experienced researchers know that a good library actually can help them produce better products with less effort. Indeed, once you know your way around the library, you will find writing easier because you can find a lot of thorough, credible information on your subject. The best place to start your research in the library is the reference section, where you can find a variety of subject encyclopedias with useful overviews and definitions. Later, you can move on to other monographs and periodicals. Monographs are books and other items that stand alone and do not appear on a regular basis. Periodicals appear periodically, perhaps once a month or four times a year, and generally contain relatively short articles on various subjects. Some of the best-known periodicals are magazines and scholarly journals. You can find both monographs and periodicals by using electronic databases such as BraveCat and EbscoHost. When using these databases, type in key words-that is, words related to your subject--and connect them with Boolean operators, words such as "and" and "or," to narrow or broaden your search. For example, if you want to find articles about the history of billiards in America, you might type "billiards and history and United States." Before you enter the library stacks, where the books are stored, make sure that you understand the Library of Congress cataloging system, which UNCP libraries and other college libraries use to organize their books and other materials. Under this system, each book has a unique call number, such as PS 2638 .P32, in which the first one or two letters indicate the general subject--in this case, American literature. Because libraries put books in alphabetical and numerical order, books about similar subjects generally appear together on the shelves. Thus, whenever you find a book on your subject, look to the left and right of it for other books that may be of use to you. Also, always remember to check a book's bibliography, which is a list of other books and articles on similar subjects. Use the library's online catalog or another database to find these sources, check their bibliographies, and so on. Finally, if you learn about a book or article not available in your library, consider ordering it through interlibrary loan, an inexpensive method of obtaining sources stored in other libraries.

Conclusion

In this lesson, we looked at the process of conducting research in a library. In our next lesson, we will examine another source of information, the Internet.