Welcome! Intro self... How many have been in Powell Lib before? As I’ve mentioned before in GE80, this is a very large & confusing library system - 13 libraries; >8 mil. Vols. & it can take lots of time to figure out how it works. In Fall and Winter Quarters I know you got lots of excellent & useful information on various aspects of doing research for papers. I’m hoping that at the end of today’s class you’ll be even more powerful information literate researchers, so you can identify, select & locate the most useful information for your research papers for this class & for other purposes.
Class outline—url for LibGuide brown 1/2 sheet--how to find... CSA Search log Journal article structure Library map
2 Here’s what we’re going to cover today… Before we start, I just want to do a quick check about RTR…
HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE DONE THE PRETESTS AND GONE THROUGH SOME OF THE LESSONS IN THE ROAD TO RESEARCH? The Starting Points section covered identifying & focusing a topic & picking a useful article index (steps 1-4) Finding Points covered steps 5 & 6 DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT EITHER OF THESE SECTIONS? Just as a quick review of a couple of key points… … WHERE WOULD YOU LOOK UP UCLA LIBRARY BOOKS? (Catalog) … WHERE WOULD YOU LOOK UP PERIODICAL ARTICLES BY TOPIC? (Periodical index dbs)
Ok-Let’s talk a bit about your res paper assignments for this class. As I understand it, you need to research and write a paper re death & dying—end of life issues re aging You’ll also need to write an annotated bibliography, due in Week 6 For your annotated bibliography you’ll need to find 4 useful items: bks or research articles from scientific journals; no web pages; you may also want to find empirical studies Later today we’ll talk about journals, annotations, & empirical studies so you’ll know what they are Let’s start with the basic steps to doing a research paper first…
There are 7 basic information research steps … Recursive process… Questions?
-Thanks for sending me your research paper topics—they look very interesting! -HAS ANYONE ALREADY BEEN LOOKING FOR INFORMATION & FOUND TOO MUCH ON YOUR TOPIC? -HOW ABOUT TOO LITTLE?
Sometimes the words we think of first for a research topic don’t really get us enough information, or they may get us too much information LET’S HELP NANCY DO SOME MENTAL MAPPING ABOUT herTOPIC Near-death hallucinations of people in the Hispanic community WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT WORDS IN THIS TOPIC?
Now, let’s say you searched these words and couldn’t find enough or you found too much? Which other search words could you substitute for some of these words?
Near-death = near death experience*, dying Hallucinations = hallucination*, consciousness Hispanic community = Hispanic*, Latin*, Chican* or other specific groups WHY DID I PUT ASTERISKS AT THE ENDS OF SOME OF THESE WORDS? Truncation Symbol!! Very imp tip--can use it in searching to save lots of time
Let’s help Veronica with her research paper topic in case she can’t find enough or if she finds too much… 1st let’s think about a timeframe that you would want to focus on--Veronica, did you have a particular time period in mind? 20 th century? A decade, a year, compare 2 years, a range of years? Now, how about a geographic region? Ok, next, in the last example we went from “Hispanic community” to “Latin*” or “Chican*” HOW COULD WE BREAK DOWN THE CONCEPT OF DIGNITY SO THAT IT’S MORE FOCUSED? CAN YOU THINK OF SOME WORDS THAT WOULD BE RELATED TO THE IDEA OF DIGNITY IN RELATION TO DYING?
We could think about it in terms of “attitudes toward the elderly”, decision-making, views of the competence of elderly people to make their own decisions—These would be aspects of the problem And Veronica is focusing on which group regarding this topic? Senior Citizen*, Elder* Ok, so Veronica, now you’re armed with some help for ways to focus your topic You can also do this with “dying process” by thinking about words that would describe various aspects of it
I’m going to give each of you back a copy of your topic emails I’d like you to circle the key concepts Then I’d like you to work with the person next to you to come up with 1 narrower & 1 broader word for the words you circled Later you’ll be using those words to search for articles 2 min.
22 QUESTIONS?
THis is a JOURNAL, BUT HOW IS IT DIFFERENT FROM A MAGAZINE? HOLD UP A MAGAZINE & A JOURNAL… Which one of these is a journal? WHAT MAKES THIS A JOURNAL? This issue contains some of the academic conversations going on in this field.
ACADEMIC CONVERSATIONS are going on all around you in academia--some are silent, some oral -WHAT ARE THESE CONVERSATIONS? -Scholars "talk” and argue about their research silently in articles, book reviews, essays, & books, and orally at conferences, and present evidence to support their views -Other scholars respond, to agree or disagree, and also submit evidence to support their views => By doing a research paper, you’re entering into the conversation in a field, learning who are the main conversants, what are the main arguments & where you can find information about them, pro, con, reviews of the literature, and so on
What’s the key point here? Scholars select & submit evidence to support their views, and they publish their articles in journals. But journals don’t just publish everything that’s submitted to them. Here’s how the process works…
=> PUB CYCLE/TIME LAG (due to: PEER REVIEW) -Article submitted to journal -Editor sends out to a few experts in the field for review, on editorial board of journal -These “peers” don’t know who wrote the article--they critique the content, the research process, the evidence -Options: reject, send back for improvement or to answer questions, publish -Can go on for some time This is called the peer review process. Sometimes the publications are called “refereed”. =>Effort to ensure quality & rigor, based on knowledge of experts in field… Why should you care? Instructors like Professor Joosten want to see that you’re using scholarly journal articles for your papers & peer-reviewed journals are more scholarly and respected than those that are not
OK--now you know about journals & the peer review process, but you may also want to find EMPIRICAL studies, published w/in last 5 years WHAT DOES EMPIRICAL MEAN? EMPIRICAL= “derived from observation or experiment rather than speculation or theory.” Colman Dictionary of Psychology BF 31 C65 2001. Now, how do you find useful journal articles on your topic, both empirical and others? One effective method is to use article indexes or DATABASES.
22 QUESTIONS?
There are a few freely available databases, like PubMed—HAS ANYONE HEARD OF PUBMED? There are also many hundreds of licensed or subscription databases to choose from, but how do you find them? let’s take a look… UCLA LIBRARY HOME PAGE/ARTICLE DATABASES… I’ve also tried to make it easier for you by creating a research guide with links to the most useful databases for this class: http://guides.library.ucla.edu/GE80 Let’s take a look at it… Scroll down to see article databases that might be useful for your papers…
-Let’s start with PsycInfo -It indexes 1300 js in psychology & related fields, like JOURNAL OF APPLIED GERONTOLOGY, as well as book chapters, books, dissertations & conf proceedings -very wide range of topics; back to 1806! -Save time by picking a db useful for your paper Check: topics covered, types of items indexed & timeframe
18 HAS ANYONE USED PSYCINFO OR OTHER CSA databases? -In this system, in fact, you can search several important databases at once Let’s add some more dbs: pais international, soc abs 1 ST tip: always try the Advanced search: lets you limit in many different ways Read screen for tips—e.g., truncation ; look for link to Help
Let’s help Josephine with her topic—Differences in perspectives of death and grief and in pre- and post-death practices of various U.S. minority cultures (primarily East/South Asian, Latin American, Native American) It’s pretty broad, so you’ll need to focus it & now you know there are 4 ways to do that: Time period, Geographic region, aspect, person or group Let’s take part of your topic & try searching it… “ Death and grief and U.S. minorities” & we’ll add in elderly Change to ANYWHERE ANYWHERE: death OR dying AND ANYWHERE grief AND minorit* AND ANYWHERE u.s. OR united states AND ANYWHERE elder* OR senior citizen* WHY DID I PUT AN ASTERISK AT THE ENDS OF SOME WORDS? SCROLL DOWN & CLICK ON LIMIT: METHODOLOGY: Empirical ((36 total; 34 peer reviewed journals)
Click on Peer Reviewed Journals tab Sort by RELEVANCE WHAT DO WE HAVE ON THIS PAGE—WHAT’S IMPORTANT TO NOTICE, TOP TO BOTTOM? Titles of articles, Journal name, date of pub, brief abstract, descriptors WHAT DO THESE MEAN? References; Cited by Let’s take a look—click on title for #3 Migratory grief and depression among elderly Chinese American immigrants 54 references w/links to abstracts GO UP TO TOP-- cited by 19 later articles Select descriptors: CHINESE CULTURAL GROUPS and GRIEF (4 Total; all pr arts)
HOW DO YOU GET COPIES OF THESE ARTICLES? #4 Death and dying in four Asian American cultures: A descriptive study. Braun, Kathryn L. 1 ; Nichols, Rhea Death Studies. Special Issue: Cultural variations in death, dying, and bereavement. Vol 21(4), Jul-Aug 1997, pp. 327-359 UC-eLinks is the key! Can also email copies of online articles If not online or in paper –use REQUEST to get a FREE COPY! DON’T PAY FOR ARTICLES!
Now let’s go back and look at the abstract for #3 & talk about annotations… Case of bereavement adjustment among a Chinese immigrant female. Gupta, Rashmi Clinical Gerontologist: The Journal of Aging and Mental Health. Vol 23(1-2), 2001, pp. 165-167 1st, WHAT’S AN ABSTRACT? Summary of item-- DO YOU SEE ANYTHING JUDGMENTAL IN THIS ABSTRACT? DOES IT SAY THAT ANYTHING IS GOOD OR BAD? IT’S DESCRIPTIVE, and this is an important part of an annotation Another important part of an annotation is some evaluative comment--your judgment on an item
Let’s go to a free site called Internet Public Library 2 & see if we can find a librarian who’s been judgmental about something…www.ipl.org That’s sort of against the rules--we’re supposed to be objective… Search: POLITICAL SATIRE Look at Capitol Steps – click on the magnifying glass icon: CAN YOU FIND A JUDGMENT, A WORD THAT GIVES AN OPINION & EVALUATES THE SITE? Capitol Steps: Excellent political satire Annotations consist of BOTH description and evaluation REMEMBER: Write your annotation in your own words! DO NOT COPY & PASTE ABSTRACTS
22 QUESTIONS about annotations?
Now, just 1 more thing before you search for articles on your own… For your annotated bibs, you’ll need to cite them in APA style DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT APA STANDS FOR? American Psychological Assoc. AND HAS ANYONE STRUGGLED WITH TRYING TO DO CITATIONS CORRECTLY FOR A BIB? Well, I can tell you about some tools that will make citing much easier: KnightCite (ueses APA 5 th ed) SourceAid (uses APA 5 th ed) All are free websites…
OK--so I hope you’ve learned how to save time and effort in information research. We talked about Your assignments Topic Narrowing/Broadening Identified, located, evaluated articles Annotating & Citing References Remember to think critically about information & even databases And… If you forget any of this, or need help…
If you have questions, click on this link-- ask at a reference desk, send an email message, phone, or chat live with a librarian online! Thanks so much...
