Alkek Library News

Grad Students: How to Design A Research Project

Graduate students may need a refresher/introduction in social sciences research design.

These books cover how to conduct an interview, using statistics in social sciences, and quantative and qualitative research techniques.

Links below (includes e-books)

Social Sciences Methodology

Social Sciences Fieldwork

Grounded Theory

Social Sciences - Statistical Methods

Encyclopedias of Social Sciences Research Methods (good reference)

You may also use keywords like history statistics or psychology research design, etc.

Scary Things on The Internet: Spies, Robots, Hacks and Other Internet Deceptions

Periodically, we at the Alkek Library like to pass on what we know about the nature of information on the web. 

So here is a linkfest for you:

You know those link bait "news stories" on the homepages of Yahoo, AOL, MSN and more? Here's the musings of a former link bait writer, confirming that the writers work under deadline and often don't know anything about those subjects.

Here's another recent story: remember, not everyone in the comment section of your favorite internet page is who they say they are. Here is a great list of giveaway behaviors that suggest you're not interacting with an ordinary person.

In addition, an increasing number of news stories are written by computers using an artificial intelligence program.

My favorite example of internet duplicity is when celebrities actually try to anonymously comment on critical articles on themselves! Scott Adams of Dilbert fame was busted doing this.

Here's a list of other famous/rich people concealing their identities in comments sections. Yes, it's a Wikipedia link, but they do include sources for these examples.

Bottom lines:

1. Break the web habit and stop treating the open web as an authoritative source.

2. Learn to Think For Yourself, even when you perceive your own views to be unpopular (they may not be).

 

Finding Primary Sources

Primary sources are documents that are direct records of an event, raw data, documents, magazines or newspapers from the time, photos or other material created at the time of an event. Even audio recordings, buildings, or just about anything could be considered primary sources.

Our historical primary source databases are located here.

Again, if you're working in the field of history, you can search our catalog for published collections of primary sources.

Our history maven Margaret Vavarek suggests the searching the following key words in the catalog: Correspondence, Description and Travel, Diaries, Interviews, Personal Narratives, Sources, Letters or Speeches

Another way to identify primary sources is to go to Dissertation Theses Full Text, find relevant dissertations (they are fulltext online) and read their bibliographies.  You could then search to see if we our other libraries have the primary sources mentioned in these bibliographies. 

Primary sources in other disciplines can mean studies, experiment results or original research. These can be found by searching the appropriate databases and finding articles that contain primary research results.

Overcoming Information Overload with our Avatars

This tutorial gives you strategies for dealing with information overload in your research project. You need 1) context for your project 2) identifying the best sources and 3) a more specific idea.

List of e-reference sources from the Alkek Library.

If you need more specific help, get in touch with us.

Get Better Biographies with Biographies in Context

Biographies in Context is one of our reference databases. It provides detailed biographies of notable (not always superfamous) people - political leaders, musicians, artists, scientists, business leaders and more.

You can also search by type of person - say, Jamaican artist born between 1900 and 1920...

We like this database because it provides historic or artistic context as the case may be. Also, Wikipedia could suffice for the most famous people (still not recommended), but our database will cover less famous (but still important) individuals.

 

Research Tip: Find Influential Articles with Citation Analysis

Here's something to help you in your research: find the most cited articles in your field.

Chances are they are among the best written and most influential in your area. True, an article may have been overlooked and the most recent articles (however good) haven't been cited yet. But this is a cool trick if you're getting overwhelmed with too many search results.

So choose one of the citation databases links here, and search by topic, author or other parameters. Be sure to select by most cited (system defaults to most recent).

 

Use Startpages to Organize Your RSS Feeds & More

One of the coolest new tools I've been using lately is NetVibes startpage. A startpage is a personalized web homepage. Others include: iGoogle, Pageflakes, and MyYahoo. I've chosen Netvibes because you also have a public version you can share with others socially. (Pageflakes also has this feature.) Here is my Netvibes public page. Notice the different tabs .

On both the private and public page, you can choose what modules and widgets to add.  Netvibes already has many to browse and choose from. If you already have a delicious, facebook or flickr page you can have them fed to your startpage. See the larger view of the image by clicking on it.

You can also create different tabs to organize your feeds. I have one for blogs, database & journals feeds, and one I have created for research feeds for a presentation I am giving.  Tabs help to organize your RSS feeds according to how you want to view them.

On the private page, you see the same modules as on the public page plus you can add a widget to monitor your email from your different accounts in one place, have a calendar, weather widget, and more. Its as easy as clicking the "add content" button, pasting the RSS feed URL into the box and adding it to your page.

Most databases will allow you to subscribe to a search query or the latest articles from a particular journal. Use the databases help feature or look for the RSS image to find out how.

Here is a nice comparison of different startpages that discusses the different features of each one. At the bottom of the post is a chart that puts all the features together for easier comparison.

Watch the library workshop page for future workshops in late summer or the fall semester on setting up personalized startpages. Or follow the links above to create your own startpage now.

Added: Hoover's First Research Industry Profiles

The library is happy to announce the add-on of Hoover's First Research Industry Profiles. It's located within Hoovers.

This is an industry survey style business database that breaks down the structure of an industry and its current challenges and opportunities.

The reason we acquired Hoover's First Research Industry Profiles is the context that it gives to the industry information. Hoover's explains the overall nature of the industry, specific terms, the raw materials the industry requires, and the typical capitalization and profitability of the industry. Then, it discusses current opportunities and threats that industry faces. We also found the categories of industries to be more up to date than some other databases. It's a winner.

Compare to the industry and market data inside Business and Company Resource Center, Business Insights, Marketline, Market Research and Standard and Poor's. These are all good, but Hoover's brings some much needed context to the table.

Happy New Year! Learn how to use Refworks before you start your research papers.

First, I should introduce myself. My name is Tara Spies and I am the newest addition to the Alkek Library Information Literacy Instruction Team. I am a Reference/Instruction Librarian and my subject specialties are art/design, communication studies, and technology. If you have any questions about research in those areas you can contact me at [email protected] or want to request an instruction class in any of these areas with me please don't hesitate to do so.

It is the beginning of the spring semester so it is probably a good time to learn about new and improved research tools before your research gets underway. If you don't already know about Refworks, you will wish you had once you know that it is a online citation and bibliography tool that you can use to help you organize and format your citations/references for your research papers in whatever writing style you are supposed to use (APA, MLA, etc.). You can create a free account and familiarize yourself with some of its basic features. You can use their tutorial or attend one of our upcoming workshops on how to use Refworks. Once you get the hang of it you will see what a helpful tool Refworks can be for citing sources in your paper and for your reference/bibliography page that you put at the end of it.

Refworks just released a new version of Write-and-Cite that will let you download and use it while offline. The online version is still available for when it is more convenient for you. You can read about more new enhancements to Refworks in their January 2008 Release Notes

Good luck with your spring semester!