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SOCI (McEntee): Projects

During COVID-19 Restrictions

SU Libraries is still operating, albeit at a reduced capacity while we operate under social distancing restrictions. If you need help while working online, feel free to reach out! The Research & Writing Help tab can tell you how.

Also, feel free to check out the Campus Guide for the Libraries for specifics on our services right now.

Hi all! This guide is intended to help you navigate your research for Dr. McEntee's class assignments. You should check course guides and assignment instructions for information about how many sources of what type you need. But each tab here is designed to help with that process. Those tabs include:

  • To begin a your research, you have to identify keywords to search with. Whether that be through concept or mind mapping or a table, the first thing you should do before you dive into sources is brainstorm different ways fo talking about your topic.
  • Critically Evaluate gives you some questions to ask generally of your resources to determine if they are of a good quality to use for your paper.
  • Semi-Scholarly Sources and Scholarly Sources break those areas down to give you options for databases and websites to use, as well as some evaluation techniques specific to each of them.
  • Citing Sources lists a couple of places to check your citation style, but also gives some guidance for using RefWorks to help manage your citations for your bibliographies. RefWorks is great for individual use, but it is also especially helpful for group work, as you can share a folder with all of your groups citations, each with a space for everyone to add notes.
  • Research & Writing Help provides you with ways to contact folks for help, including me as your Sociology Librarian!

Copyright and Fair Use

If you are trying to cite something that has a copyright on it, working on a website versus a written paper does complicate things a little bit. However, what you are doing for this assignment should fall under the right of Fair Use. Fair use considers 4 criteria.

  1. The purpose and character of the use (educational or commercial?)
  2. Nature of the copyrighted work (published or unpublished? creative or factual?)
  3. Portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole (how much are you using? 1 sentence? 1 chapter? an entire image?)
  4. The effect of the use on the potential market (how will your use affect copyright's potential profit?)

If you choose to use a work (written, image, or video) with an open access or creative commons license, then you do not need to consider the copyright in the same way. Those works have been given a license that encourages the use for others.