Goals for today
- Identify source requirements
- Accessing sources; strategic reading
- Strategically search library databases; "Find It" links to find full text of articles.
- Cite sources using this discipline's main citation style.
Contact me for help
Research project source requirements
Research project and presentation. 160 points.
Goal: To conduct research on a topic that interests you in the field of nonverbal communication.
This work must show evidence of research and review of academic sources (peer reviewed articles) and nonverbal communication concepts discussed during the semester.
Think of these sources as pieces of evidence that support your research argument, but also as a timeline describing types of sources to gather and use from start to completion of your first draft.
- Exploring the topic: non-scholarly sources (Web search for news or non-library sources)
- Academic searching: Scholarly Books for background research (search the library catalog for these)
- Academic searching: Scholarly Articles for current research (Library databases AND Google Scholar)
- Giving credit to your sources (citations)
- Drafts & revisions (consult research librarians, writing center, tutors, etc)
Google scholar can be helpful, but it only provides you with results that it can find for free on the open web. Articles from subscription library databases are invisible. This is why you often hit a "pay wall" instead of the full text article.
Consequently, if you only use Google Scholar in your research, you are seeing results that are the tip of the iceberg. It's best to use both Google Scholar and licensed library databases.
This research approach works every time:
1. Use library tools first. If we don't have it, go to step 2.
2. Try Google Scholar as a fallback plan. If that doesn't work (like, you hit a paywall), go to step 3.
3. Use SU Libraries' Interlibrary Loan service when all else fails. If you have citation info for a source you can't find in full text, request it through Interlibrary Loan.
Identifying keywords for searching
Next in this workshop, we will need to identify keywords from our research topics to search for books and articles using library tools.
Try this quick tutorial on how to identify keywords from a research topic.