English dissertation research skills
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This document provides guidance on research skills for dissertation work, including developing effective search strategies using keywords and alternative terms, tips for searching library databases, and evaluating sources using the CRAAP test to assess currency, relevance, authority, accuracy and purpose. It also gives an overview of the library resources available at the College including books, ejournals, and inter-library loans, as well as contact information for getting additional research help.
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English dissertation research skills
- 1. Dissertation Research Skills October 2018 RachelWhite
- 2. Aims of the Session • Talk about key research skills that will help you find resources for your dissertation • Library resources refreshers • Other ways to access resources
- 3. Introduction to the Library
- 4. The College Library Academic Information Information not available on the internet Free to use Variety of resources Help & Support
- 5. We have two collections: High Use and General
- 7. How to find good information 1. What exactly is the topic you are searching for? 2. What are the main concepts or keywords for your topic? 3. Are there are alternative terms for these concept? Lego bicycle by Do-Hyun Kim CC BY-ND. Flickr.
- 8. Developing a Search Strategy Pick out the key words in your topic Find alternative terms Identify good sources of information Combine your key words Locate texts Read
- 10. KeyWords Alternative Terms e.g. film/movies/motion pictures Alternative Spellings e.g. Organisation/ Organization Acronyms e.g. RSC/ Royal Shakespeare Company Changing terminology e.g. actors/players
- 11. Thinking about KeyWords Representation of the working classes in the novels of Dickens Concept 1 Concept 2 Concept 3 Depiction Working class Dickens Role Poverty Charles Dickens Portrayal Family/children Particular Novels Wider literary period
- 12. Activity
- 13. Thinking about KeyWords Think about your own ideas for you dissertation topic, can you think of some keywords you could use for searching?
- 14. SearchTips
- 15. SearchTips AND – narrows your search eg. povertyAND Dickens OR – broadens your search eg. LGBT OR “Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender” NOT – narrows your search by excluding a keyword e.g. film NOT television
- 16. SearchTips • * truncation allows you to search for work endings eg. femin* will search for femine, feminist, feminism • ? Wildcards allow you search for letter alternatives within a word eg.Wom?n • “” phrase searches allow you to search for words in a certain order eg. “Victorian Literature”
- 17. Library Resources – A Refresher
- 18. Identify Resources Books/ebooks JournalArticles Newspaper Articles Reports Reference Material eResources
- 20. Evaluating
- 21. Why is evaluating sources important? Vast amounts of information available Making sure you are using appropriate sources in your work An important academic skill to develop Important for the wider wide e.g. fake news, filter bubbles BBC, 2017
- 22. The CRAAPTest Currency When was it published? Is the information too old? When was it last up-dated? How important is it that you have up-to-date information? Relevancy Does it fit your project? Will your project be stronger if you include this information? Authority Who has published or written the information? Do you trust them? Is it easy to find out anything about them? Accuracy Is the information correct? Is the information supported by evidence/references? Can you verify the information in another source? Purpose Why does the information exist? Is it trying to sell you something, persuade you or give you an opinion? Once you figure this out, you can then deceive how to use the information that you have found.
- 23. Further Afield
- 24. Why is evaluating sources important? • Senate House • Inter library loan requests • More Books • Sconul and other libraries • If in doubt contact me, Rachel.white@rhul.ac.uk
- 25. Any questions?
- 26. Don't forget: • Rachel.white@rhul.ac.uk • http://libguides.rhul.ac.uk/ • 1-2-1 Sessions
Editor's Notes
- Importance of browsing books and finding them, e.g. searching on library search use the shelf mark for a useful book go to to shelf in both sections - also show the function on library search and browsing
- So you will all be thinking about your proposed dissertation and the research questions you want to answer. Before you start thinking about the searching for resources to use in your dissertation you should spend some time thinking about your search strategy Searching for resources, the clue is in the title. It can take a while to “search” for resources so important to spend some time thinking about this, planning it and reading materials. The more you can read on your area the better you will understand it. Pick out keywords Important to think about the keywords in your dissertation topic, what are the main concepts that are jumping out at you. These will form the basis of the search terms that you will use to find resources Alternative terms Are there alternative ways of saying the keywords? Important to have a bank of keywords to use. You may search say library search with a set of keywords, and then use the same on google scholar but you might not return the same number of hits. Each database has its own type of vocabulary and some keywords might return more hits than others. Trial and error 3. Good sources of information? a. Where are you going to look for resources? Google Scholar? Library Resources? Books? Articles? Films? Images? 4. Combine your keywords a. You can combine your keywords with connecting words to return more relevant searches. You can use them to broaden the number of results, or narrow them down. More in this in a second 5. Locate texts. a. Start looking for texts. Can use things like citation searching more of this in a second. Good tip is to read the abstract to see if useful before spending time reading the whole article. 6. Read a. Spend time reading resources, will give you a better understanding of the resources available. Important to evaluate material, think about who has written it and why, is this information still accurate, has it been written because of a specific agenda. More help about this can be found on the subject guide
- Library Refresher Library Search – Explain all of the tabs English Subject Guide – Talk through the subject guide and explain the databases and why they are important to use. Especially finding an article that you may have found online and can’t access in full, want to see if the library has it. Use because Get access to information you cannot freely source on the internet. We pay for the resources for you so need to log in to access them Subject specific resources Reliable and trustworthy We can support you on using them
- Marlon atkins Claire Velazquez Hleb voukau