Resources for Research
Note: These hints are directed at English students who are doing research, there are many disciplinary conventions that would/should perhaps change your approach. As always context determines meaning. These were last updated on Spring 07.
Getting Started
- First you need to make decisions about what type of writing you will be undertaking. That is who is your audience, what is the context for your article. This will in large part determine your research. If you are writing for mainstream media or a blog, academic journals are probably not the focus of your research, but for writing in English departments, generally speaking mainstream media publications are not good sources to which to turn.
- Formulate an idea about your topic before you start. This will help with several common problems. First it will prevent you from being overly influenced by others writings, and falling into the mistake of just quoting others without doing your own analysis. But secondly, and just as important you need to narrow your topic before you start, the more specific you can be the more successful you will be in your work.
- Go get a tabbed browser for you computer and start using it. You wouldn't read books by candlelight why surf the net with Explorer? It is slow, clunky and doesn't have tabs. Try Firefox (Mac or PC), or for Mac users Safari and Camino are also good choices.
The Big Picture
- It is important to start in the present and work back, (not the other way around). Why? Because you do not want to waste time reading whole books that are irrelevant or outdated. Instead focus on the current works and look to see what books they reference. If you find a book that is referenced in several articles, than you have an idea which book you should read.
- Once you start keep track of everything: write down the books, authors etc., bookmark pages, download articles. Take meticulous notes before your research gets out of hand and you cannot remember where you found something and you spend 42 hours looking for a piece you sort of remember reading three weeks ago but cannot remember where. (Personally I recommend a flash-drive for this-just backup often in case you loose it somewhere.)
- Keep in mind no work is neutral, everything has a slant. Pay attention to the ideological frame of the piece.
The Web
The way we archive information has substantially changed over the past twenty years. To be effective at research means you need to be effective at navigating the web (never Exploring-that's for Microsoft). This doesn't mean you will not need to look thru libraries and primary sources, but that you have to use the web as well.
Determining Authenticity
Despite what luddites would like you to believe authenticity is not a problem specific to the web, just ask Oprah. The ways to establish authenticity have simply changed.
- Pay attention to the content of the page. Try clicking the about link, see who the sponsoring organization is, what type of credentials and expertise do they have?
- Look at the end of the url. This gives you a hint about the authoring organization.
- Check to see who owns the web address. Go to Network Solutions or Go Daddy(located at the bottom of GoDaddy page) and do a WHOIS search, this will tell you who maintains the url (as long as they are not using a proxy).
- Or, you can try Domain Tools.
- Is the site documenting and referencing its sources?
- Look to the homepage. If there is no homepage link work backwards in the url cutting off everything after forward. For example in the above address chop off the Resources.html, and you will end up at this site's homepage.
- Be wary of the “~” in an address, this usually means the space is being poached and not authenticated by the institution.
- Keep in mind, this is all about context. The more you can find the better, and if the site hides the contextual elements be wary.
Googling (Yes, this is a verb)
- The key to google is they are approaching 22 billion pages. So, you have to figure how to narrow your search.
- If you search for the name of any novel, you are likely to get way too many hits to ever look through. Try an advanced search and search only in the titles of html documents.
- Or simply try adding the word syllabus to your search, this will often return some interesting results.
- Instead of google try Scholar.google this is a much more narrow search with tabbed information
- Search for a specific line in the the text you are using. For example if you are looking for information on House of Leaves add to this “This is not for you” a often cited piece of text. This will get rid of all of the booksellers in your search.
But, eventually you want to get past all of this, what you are really looking for are the databases of articles.
Going Deep
Although google searches those close to 22 billion pages, estimates are that the web is 500 times this. So, how do you get to this stuff? Get to the info that google web crawlers do not? How do you get to the “deep web” or the “invisible web”?
The Databases
Ultimately what you are after are these databases and the ability to access these articles. Most of them require subscriptions, but most academic institutions have subscriptions. (And lucky for those in my classes, Albany does, even for off campus students you just need a NetId).
- First step: Ask an expert. There are way too many databases out there, ask people in your subject area which database they use. This is perhaps the most important step, you could spend needless hours searching in the wrong places, whereas a two minute question would point you in the right place.
- Notice when you access the database page at Albany (the page with letters A-Z at the top) on the bottom left is a box with a list of disciplines. This is a useful place to start. Select the discipline in which you are researching, and you can see a list of recommended journals.
- That having been said, for English there are three that I use: EBSCO, JSTOR, and Project Muse. They each have their advantages and disadvantages and you will probably find articles that are listed across all of them. If you are an Albany student you can access them all here. They are listed alphabetically, just click the letter you want.
- Sometimes it is useful to temporarily skip the general database step and go to searching specific journals. This again is where an expert can help. They can tell you which journals are the most “respected” in the field. (For example, sometimes I begin my work by searching in Postmodern Culture just to see what comes up.) But it is important to go back and use the databases to make sure you are not limiting your scope, or prejudicing yourself by beginning to narrow.
- When you are searching you can save the references to a separate file to export for later use. But perhaps better, (and this is where tabbed browsing is really important) every article you want to check out you can click, and have open in a new tab (usually this is right click, or command click). This saves you having to mentally jump from glancing at articles to reading them. What I do is open a bunch (10 or so) in separate tabs, they can load in the background, and than I “mentally switch” to reading them. Ones which I determine are not of use, I just close their tab, ones I want for further/closer reading I save.
- Now, depending on the scope of your project you can work back to the books. Look for books which seem compelling, or are shared amongst several articles, go to the library and check them out-see I still like books.