Lost in wiki-land!
September 20, 2010 9:50 AM Subscribe
What online resources are the kids using these days for university research?
Just started my first year of university (English program) after a lengthy break from school. I'm a little rusty at this whole... homework.. thing. Ideally what I'm looking for is a more reliable, more academic version of wikipedia. The online encyclopedias I've found so far require a subscription. Alternatively, which subscription resource is the best deal?
Just started my first year of university (English program) after a lengthy break from school. I'm a little rusty at this whole... homework.. thing. Ideally what I'm looking for is a more reliable, more academic version of wikipedia. The online encyclopedias I've found so far require a subscription. Alternatively, which subscription resource is the best deal?
Your university library should already have subscriptions to any resource you'll ever need. Check out its website.
posted by oinopaponton at 9:55 AM on September 20, 2010 [2 favorites]
posted by oinopaponton at 9:55 AM on September 20, 2010 [2 favorites]
Have you talked with your university's librarians? Email, call, or visit the reference librarian. He or she is paid to help you with these kinds of questions. Librarians are excellent resources!
posted by infodiva at 9:55 AM on September 20, 2010 [3 favorites]
posted by infodiva at 9:55 AM on September 20, 2010 [3 favorites]
"The kids" are just sticking random words into Google and hoping for the best.
Seriously, this is what librarians are for. The librarians I know complain that nobody knows about [insert awesome resource here].
posted by madcaptenor at 9:58 AM on September 20, 2010 [1 favorite]
Seriously, this is what librarians are for. The librarians I know complain that nobody knows about [insert awesome resource here].
posted by madcaptenor at 9:58 AM on September 20, 2010 [1 favorite]
Seconding looking at your university library website. They should have a database called Academic Search Premier that will help you find articles from all sorts of different journals. It's a good place to start. Also, Google Scholar can turn up some pretty good finds as long as you are confident in your ability to distinguish good, trustworthy writing from bad, biased writing.
posted by delicate_dahlias at 10:00 AM on September 20, 2010
posted by delicate_dahlias at 10:00 AM on September 20, 2010
For anything philosophy-related (which might come up in an English program) the Stanford encyclopedia is awesome. Also your university must have some way of accessing JSTOR for articles -- the librarians will know.
posted by creasy boy at 10:04 AM on September 20, 2010
posted by creasy boy at 10:04 AM on September 20, 2010
Here's what I would suggest:
1. Look up any concepts/terms you're unfamiliar with in Wikipedia. DON'T cite Wikipedia as a source, but use it to familiarise yourself with the key words associated with the term.
2. Use those key words to help you search Google Scholar, Google Books, and whatever search database your university has a subscription to (Academic Search Premier, JSTOR, etc).
Google Books is especially useful as it has a lot of partial textbooks, so you can skim through them (and search for key words!) before (or perhaps instead of) checking them out. And, if you can find a really good textbook, it might be worth buying it as it can take the place of Wikipedia as a source of definitions and you'll be able to cite it.
3. DON'T buy any articles - your university should have subscriptions to most of the ones you need. Talk to a librarian for details on how to access the electronic library remotely.
posted by brambory at 10:15 AM on September 20, 2010 [4 favorites]
1. Look up any concepts/terms you're unfamiliar with in Wikipedia. DON'T cite Wikipedia as a source, but use it to familiarise yourself with the key words associated with the term.
2. Use those key words to help you search Google Scholar, Google Books, and whatever search database your university has a subscription to (Academic Search Premier, JSTOR, etc).
Google Books is especially useful as it has a lot of partial textbooks, so you can skim through them (and search for key words!) before (or perhaps instead of) checking them out. And, if you can find a really good textbook, it might be worth buying it as it can take the place of Wikipedia as a source of definitions and you'll be able to cite it.
3. DON'T buy any articles - your university should have subscriptions to most of the ones you need. Talk to a librarian for details on how to access the electronic library remotely.
posted by brambory at 10:15 AM on September 20, 2010 [4 favorites]
GOOGLE SCHOLAR. Plus Jstor, PAIS, Web of Science, all that jazz. You should have access to these through your library website. Seriously, go to your friendly uni librarian and ask them what's what... that's what they're there for!
posted by emkelley at 10:17 AM on September 20, 2010
posted by emkelley at 10:17 AM on September 20, 2010
Not only would your librarians love to help you with this, they probably offer info sessions where you can learn all about the online resources they have available. I know I've had to sit through innumerable library orientations, and while I find them dull now, the first ones were incredibly useful. Most likely, you can use all sorts of subscription-based online services for free, as long as you log in to your school's proxy server, or are on campus. Your librarian can both teach you how to do this and give you an overview of which resources are likely to be most useful.
Since you're in English, the MLA is going to be the most useful article database for you; JSTOR is great, but they have a time lag, so the most recent few years of most journals won't be available.
posted by dizziest at 10:20 AM on September 20, 2010 [1 favorite]
Since you're in English, the MLA is going to be the most useful article database for you; JSTOR is great, but they have a time lag, so the most recent few years of most journals won't be available.
posted by dizziest at 10:20 AM on September 20, 2010 [1 favorite]
Nthing the suggestion to schedule an appointment with a librarian. You might do so early in the semester, just to get the lay of the land, but definitely do so once you're facing your first research paper and need to find specific resources to help with your topic. That's what they're there for. Many library websites also have subject-specific resource lists with links, for example, to the top 10 databases for English majors, etc.
With that said, as an English major you should at minimum find out how to access and use: the OED Online (etymologies, historical usages); the MLA International Bibliography (criticism), plus MUSE/JSTOR/whatever other full-text journal gateway your institution offers; the English Dictionary of National Biography (biographical details for important figures); and any full-text literature databases available at your institution, like LION/EEBO/ECCO/EPO/whatever. Those alone will give you a pretty respectable leg up on Wikipedia.
posted by Bardolph at 10:24 AM on September 20, 2010
With that said, as an English major you should at minimum find out how to access and use: the OED Online (etymologies, historical usages); the MLA International Bibliography (criticism), plus MUSE/JSTOR/whatever other full-text journal gateway your institution offers; the English Dictionary of National Biography (biographical details for important figures); and any full-text literature databases available at your institution, like LION/EEBO/ECCO/EPO/whatever. Those alone will give you a pretty respectable leg up on Wikipedia.
posted by Bardolph at 10:24 AM on September 20, 2010
Nthing what everyone's saying about asking your librarians. Your university library may even have an orientation thing to give you an overview of the resources available. I returned to school after a lengthy absence, myself, and even though my Google-fu is strong, I still struggled with where to start looking for academic research for awhile until I finally took a library orientation.
posted by rhiannonstone at 11:08 AM on September 20, 2010
posted by rhiannonstone at 11:08 AM on September 20, 2010
Professor here, not of English.
There's a vast, yawning chasm between what the kids these days actually do, for the most part, and what they ought to do.
What they tend to do: fire random words into the googlesphere and uncritically regurgitate whatever comes back. Quote at length from wikipedia or, I am not making this up, "Ben's Guide to U.S. Government -- For Kids." Cut and paste directly from online sources without citation, without even changing the font, and leaving the pasted material as a hyperlink. Actually find an article, and then cite it to JSTOR, which is the equivalent to a citation of "Bloznik Library, 8th Floor."
What they ought to do: develop good research skills. This is where the librarian can help. In practice, most decent research skills involves snowballing (HURF DURF): starting with a few recent citations, seeing what they cite, and reading back along the chain until you have a decent sense of what's going on.
In almost all university settings, any sort of encyclopedia will be utterly unacceptable as a source, and may be taken as a personal insult to the grader. Encyclopedias, including wikipedia, can be thoroughly decent and fast ways to get yourself up to speed with basic background information about a topic you don't know much about, but you'll have to use the discussions there to springboard yourself to looking at sources that aren't third-hand predigested pablum.
If you're not sure where to begin or what to do research on, FOR GOD'S SAKE ASK YOUR INSTRUCTOR.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:22 AM on September 20, 2010 [6 favorites]
There's a vast, yawning chasm between what the kids these days actually do, for the most part, and what they ought to do.
What they tend to do: fire random words into the googlesphere and uncritically regurgitate whatever comes back. Quote at length from wikipedia or, I am not making this up, "Ben's Guide to U.S. Government -- For Kids." Cut and paste directly from online sources without citation, without even changing the font, and leaving the pasted material as a hyperlink. Actually find an article, and then cite it to JSTOR, which is the equivalent to a citation of "Bloznik Library, 8th Floor."
What they ought to do: develop good research skills. This is where the librarian can help. In practice, most decent research skills involves snowballing (HURF DURF): starting with a few recent citations, seeing what they cite, and reading back along the chain until you have a decent sense of what's going on.
In almost all university settings, any sort of encyclopedia will be utterly unacceptable as a source, and may be taken as a personal insult to the grader. Encyclopedias, including wikipedia, can be thoroughly decent and fast ways to get yourself up to speed with basic background information about a topic you don't know much about, but you'll have to use the discussions there to springboard yourself to looking at sources that aren't third-hand predigested pablum.
If you're not sure where to begin or what to do research on, FOR GOD'S SAKE ASK YOUR INSTRUCTOR.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:22 AM on September 20, 2010 [6 favorites]
Find a copy of The Oxford Guide to Library Research. It's an absolutely amazing book in terms of explaining what your best research methods are resources are, and even if you don't read anything else in it, one of the first chapters is about specialty encyclopedias, which most people either don't know about or forget about. As other folks have said above, it's not kosher to cite an encyclopedia in a paper, but the specialty ones can help you get oriented to an unfamiliar subject and give you some ideas of where to start searching next.
posted by colfax at 12:35 PM on September 20, 2010
posted by colfax at 12:35 PM on September 20, 2010
Google Scholar is great for finding articles but not necessarily for actually accessing them. You can get many more articles through your library than you can access free on the net. (Which is to say, Google will give you a lot of links to abstracts, or articles behind a paywall). Here's a little trick to integrate Google Scholar with your library's reserves (best of both worlds in my opinion!):
1. First things first, head over to Google Scholar.
2. Click on Scholar Preferences in the top right corner.
3. Scroll down to Library Links and type in the name of your university.
4. With luck, when you click Find Library it will pop up the name of your school with a check box.
5. Check the box, scroll down, and click Save Preferences.
Now when you search for info with Google Scholar, links will appear that will take you to the relevant articles from your school library. This is helpful because not everything is available for free on the internet, but many things are available from your library. (This accomplishes basically the same thing as searching each of your library's databases directly, except you're doing all the searching at once through Google). When you click your first link to a paper in the library, it'll take you to the library's login page before taking you to the paper, but after you've logged in once (per session) you should be set to get all your papers through Google Scholar.
I use this + Web of Science for most of my searching needs; see if your library has any specialty databases for your field that may be a good resource for you.
posted by pemberkins at 1:25 PM on September 20, 2010
1. First things first, head over to Google Scholar.
2. Click on Scholar Preferences in the top right corner.
3. Scroll down to Library Links and type in the name of your university.
4. With luck, when you click Find Library it will pop up the name of your school with a check box.
5. Check the box, scroll down, and click Save Preferences.
Now when you search for info with Google Scholar, links will appear that will take you to the relevant articles from your school library. This is helpful because not everything is available for free on the internet, but many things are available from your library. (This accomplishes basically the same thing as searching each of your library's databases directly, except you're doing all the searching at once through Google). When you click your first link to a paper in the library, it'll take you to the library's login page before taking you to the paper, but after you've logged in once (per session) you should be set to get all your papers through Google Scholar.
I use this + Web of Science for most of my searching needs; see if your library has any specialty databases for your field that may be a good resource for you.
posted by pemberkins at 1:25 PM on September 20, 2010
The Oxford Guide mentioned above is from 1998. Everything has changed dramatically since then!
Your university library undoubtedly, as others have mentioned, offers workshops to get you started. At the very least they probably have some online tutorials. If you are a distance education student taking all of your courses online there should be at least one librarian to help students like you.
You're gonna be amazed at the wealth of resources your library makes available! Have fun.
posted by mareli at 1:27 PM on September 20, 2010
Your university library undoubtedly, as others have mentioned, offers workshops to get you started. At the very least they probably have some online tutorials. If you are a distance education student taking all of your courses online there should be at least one librarian to help students like you.
You're gonna be amazed at the wealth of resources your library makes available! Have fun.
posted by mareli at 1:27 PM on September 20, 2010
I would just like to favorite what ROU_Xenophobe said a hundred million times. DO NOT do what "most kids" are doing: they're doing it wrong. Start with your library--in many cases the library will have a list of databases by subject, so look for that. In larger universities they may even have a specific subject/area librarian whose job it is to help you.
Also, to expand upon why we're telling you to avoid encyclopedias: the job of an encyclopedia is to be a general information source, which means presenting secondary (summaries of original work) or tertiary (summaries of summaries) sources. Most of the time at the college/university level we are looking for students to use *primary* sources, i.e. the original research, not a summary or a summary of a summary.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 1:52 PM on September 20, 2010
Also, to expand upon why we're telling you to avoid encyclopedias: the job of an encyclopedia is to be a general information source, which means presenting secondary (summaries of original work) or tertiary (summaries of summaries) sources. Most of the time at the college/university level we are looking for students to use *primary* sources, i.e. the original research, not a summary or a summary of a summary.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 1:52 PM on September 20, 2010
I can't add enough emphasis to what everyone else is saying. Invest a little time in an appointment with a reference librarian and learn how to use the resources and tools available. A "personal" librarian can be your secret weapon in this new venture. If you don't "click" with one librarian, try another. Get your favorite's email and phone number.
Many libraries also have a 24/7 reference service available online and librarians will answer your research questions. Once you can navigate the system, you can have the library at your fingertips via the internet. Every year more and more scholarly full text articles become available online through your library.
As a "non-traditional" student, you'll be seen as a serious student and will be appreciated by the librarians. You can easily become a favorite of your librarian and get all kinds of good information (think how to cite every sort of reference in the whole wide world) as well as tips about navigating the the university at large. Librarians rock! (They also like small pieces of chocolate.)
posted by Anitanola at 6:47 PM on September 20, 2010
Many libraries also have a 24/7 reference service available online and librarians will answer your research questions. Once you can navigate the system, you can have the library at your fingertips via the internet. Every year more and more scholarly full text articles become available online through your library.
As a "non-traditional" student, you'll be seen as a serious student and will be appreciated by the librarians. You can easily become a favorite of your librarian and get all kinds of good information (think how to cite every sort of reference in the whole wide world) as well as tips about navigating the the university at large. Librarians rock! (They also like small pieces of chocolate.)
posted by Anitanola at 6:47 PM on September 20, 2010
Just dropping by to say, there's a 2005 edition of the Oxford Guide. I mistakenly sent you a link to the older one because I was in a rush on my lunch break. Please don't discount it because of my dumb error.
posted by colfax at 8:36 PM on September 20, 2010
posted by colfax at 8:36 PM on September 20, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by torisaur at 9:53 AM on September 20, 2010 [4 favorites]