M469: Content Area Literacies
This is a library course page for M469. Use this page to help you complete your research for your assignment.
Background Research
Before chosing your topic it is important to do some background research to learn more about your topic. The more you know about your topic the easier it will be to complete your research.
Reference books such as encyclopedias are a great source to use to find background information on your topic.
Use an encyclopedia to get a basic understanding of a topic, a framework for understanding a more complex idea, and a list of other resources to consult.
When reading about your topic be sure to look for:
- Who is it about/Who was there?
- What happened?
- Where did it take place?
- When did it happen?
- Why did it happen?
- How did it happen?
- When did it happen?
You should also note dates, names, events and places. This will help you when you begin to search for articles and books on your topic.
Use Visuwords to see how ideas are related, to find synonyms and antonyms, and to create a visual map of your ideas. Visuwords will give you an indication of whether you have a broad or narrow topic.
A research good topic is not too broad or too narrow.
Signs of a topic that is too broad:
- A search in IUCAT, the libraries online catalog, returns over 500 results
- The topic has several sub-categories
Signs of a topic that is too narrow
- A search in IUCAT, the libraries online catalog, returns very few results
Use the resources below to learn more about your topic:
Encyclopedias - are a great way to learn more about your topic
After you have your topic, you can develop a research question.
Once you have your research question, you are ready to begin your research. The first step is to select good keywords.
Depending on your topic, your keywords can be important names, places or events. You can also use the answers to the Who, What When, Where, Why & How as your keywords.
Keywords should be descriptive and not too general. Grouping common phrases together usually leads to better results. For example, if your research question is:
How did the "September 11 terriorist attacks affect muslims living in the United States"?
"Terrriorist attacks" would be a more descriptive keyword than "terriorist" and may give you better search results.
"September 11" could be used as a keyword but you should also try "9/11" as the topic can be written about in different ways.
If you wanted to find newspaper articles written about the terrorist attacks during the week the attacks occured , you would need to limit your search to by date so it would be helpful to know the entire date: September 11, 2001.
Evaluating Information (IU Wells Library)
Evaluating Web Sources (Cornell University)
Evaluating Web Sources (UC-Berkeley)
An online resource that covers many subject areas in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities with many publication types: books, magazines, newspapers, education reports, and academic journals. The reading level varies from expert to non-expert. Contains both abstracts (summaries of articles and books with links to request the full article/book) and complete articles.
Archive of popular newspapers dating back to the early 1800s. The database includes the full-text of the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and many other historical newspapers .
Provides access to newspapers and popular magazines, radio and television transcripts.
Covers the history of the United States and Canada from pre-history to the present, indexing more than 2000 journals published worldwide, dissertations and reviews. Coverage is from 1964-the present.
An online resource that covers many subject areas, including the humanities and social sciences, with academic journals. All articles will be available in pdf format.
An online resource that covers many subject areas, including the humanities and social sciences, with academic journals. All articles will be available in pdf format.
You can access additional historical databases by clicking on Subjects then History on the libraries web site.
