BIS 300: Interdisciplinary Inquiry - Gen McCoy

Your Librarian: Sarah Leadley, sleadley@uwb.edu - phone: 425.352.5387 - office: Library, 310D Contact Sarah!

Worksheet #1 (MS Word doc) : please post to Blackboard before class on May 1.

Library Worksheet #2:
Getting Started Helpful Links
Finding Books, Articles & more

Before you begin, try this short tutorial on connecting to UW Restricted databases from off-campus

Useful Research 101 tutorials include: Info Cycle , Searching and Citations - but I also highly recommend doing the whole thing!

 

Books and Films

  • UW Libraries Catalog - Contains over 6 million titles held by more than 20 branches of the UW Libraries. Requested items arrive in 2-5 business days.
  • Summit Catalog - Access over 22 million books, sound recordings, films, video tapes, and more. Current UWB students may request items from this catalog and items take about 3-5 business days to arrive.
  • Worldcat Local - Search locally and worldwide; includes selected articles from magazines, and journals in education and medicine.

Reference Books- finding background information

Articles

  • General/Interdisciplinary Databases
    • Academic Search Complete UW restricted Scholarly and popular sources
    • Expanded Academic ASAP UW restricted Scholarly and popular sources
    • Google Scholar (UW restricted) Google Scholar Search Tips
      • If you're searching from home/off-campus click on the "off-campus access" link at the top of this page first - this will allow Google scholar to recognize you as a UW affiliated researcher so that you can access the full text of articles.
    • JSTOR UW restricted Scholarly sources
    • Project Muse SearchUW restricted
    • ProQuest UW restricted Scholarly and popular sources
    • Web of of Science UW restricted scholarly journals, multidisciplinary. You can also search to see if an article has been cited by other scholars using the CITED REFERENCE function

Additional Resources
Library workshops

Workshop 2 - Finding and Using Scholarly Sources (books and articles) and fine-tuning your topic

Library Worksheet #2:

Specialized Research databases for scholarly articles

More General and Interdisciplinary Research Databases

Books: UW Libraries Catalog and Summit Catalog

 

About Scholarly Sources

Ulrich's periodicals directory -  UW restricted 
This database can help you determine if a journal is considered scholarly, and if it has a "peer review" process. Keep in mind though that not all articles published in scholarly journals are themselves scholarly - your database searches may also turn up book reviews, editorials or short opinion articles. Keep reading if you want some tips on identifying scholarly articles (and books).

Your assignment requires that you draw upon research that's been done on your topic area (in addition to news reporting, popular magazines, general info from the web, etc.) This can come from academic books, scholarly journals, government agencies or research institutes. Researchers are often affiliated with universities, but also work for governments (local, state, national) or independent research institutes.

  • the main purpose of these kinds of sources is to report on the author's original research or experimentation in order to make such information available to other researchers
  • author(s) cite their sources in the form of footnotes or bibliographies
  • author is a scholar or expert in the field
  • the language is typically that of the discipline(s) covered
  • usually assume that the reader has some prior knowledge of the topic or problem
  • many scholarly journal articles are "peer reviewed" or "refereed". To be accepted for publication in a given journal the author of an article must submit his or her article to be reviewed, usually anonymously, by a panel of experts in the field

Often, the difference between scholarly/research publications and other types of secondary sources (magazines, newspapers, etc.) is that the former contain extensive footnotes and/or endnotes that document how and why the author makes the claims that s/he does -- and what the limits of those claims are. While both types of publications tend to present you with lots of interesting (or uninteresting) information, only scholarly publications let you in on the secret of how that information was created by revealing the disagreements among "experts" as they research similar questions. This advantage of reading scholarly publications is that they allow you to enter into the creative process of knowledge making by treating you as a fellow researcher who may want to extend, modify, and/or criticize the claims made in what you are reading.

 

 

Workshop 1 - Selecting and focusing a topic; background research

Hot Topics/Issues links

Worksheet links:

Additional Resources

Contact Sarah

 Contact me with questions about how to find information on your paper topic! You can call, e-mail or IM me.

Sarah Leadley, American Studies Librarian
sleadley@uwb.edu
425.352.5387
Campus Library, LB1-310D

More ways to get help - including the UW Libraries 24/7 online reference service

Instant Message Sarah, your librarian, using this box:
If you have a quick question about research resources or need help with an assignment.

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