Research Strategies: Finding Information

Finding Information

Some preliminary distinctions:
1. There are tools for finding information:
e.g., card catalogue, Griffin, Yahoo, Alta Vista
and information sources themselves:
e.g. books, journals, CD-ROMs, Web pages

2. Information sources can be categorized according to content, scope, organization and material form.

Encarta and Encyclopedia Brittanica are both encyclopedias (broad scope, alphabetical organization), but differ in material form (electronic vs. print).

A journal article (narrow focus, specialized content) may be in printed form or on the Web in electronic form.

In researching your topic, it is generally best to proceed from the most general type of information source to the most specific.

First, get an overview of the topic from sources with broad scope: encyclopedias, subject dictionaries, certain types of handbooks, historical atlases.

These sources give you a mental framework on the topic to which you can add more detailed and specialized knowledge. I cannot emphasize too strongly how much time you'll save if you do this first. Be sure to keep track of suggestions for further reading given in the articles.

Examples: Encarta, Encyclopedia Brittanica, New Catholic Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia of Islam, Encyclopedia of Judaism, Dictionary of the Middle Ages, Atlas of Medieval Man.

Next, decide how you want to narrow your topic and begin to find more specific types of information.

Use browsing and subject searching in library catalogues (card or on-line) to get a sense of topics covered in the field.

Use general and specialized bibliographies (cumulated or periodical) to find specific books and articles on your topic.

Examples: MLA Bibliography (general language and literature, both cumulated and current), History Abstracts, Chaucer: a Bibliographical Introduction, by Leyerle and Quick (specialized, cumulated and annotated), Chaucer Bibliography (on-line and print, published as part of a journal and appears periodically).

Refine your topic again and search for more specialized information, if you need it, in journals, books, and on-line sources.

A word on electronic searching:

In a traditional academic library, the information is, in many ways, pre-screened for minimum levels of quality. With limited budgets, libraries don't buy just anything; they buy what faculty and subject specialists deem to be academically qualified materials. Because they can't screen every item before buying, they rely on a sifting process known as "peer review" or refeering," in which material is judge worthy of publication after it has been reviewed an approved by scholars in the field. So, for example, a university press sends manuscripts out to expert readers before making a decision to publish. The librarian, then, knowing that this is the case, can be confident that books from university presses meet certain basic levels of academic suitability. It doesn't mean that the arguments are right, or all the information absolutely correct, just that it is worthy of being published, read, and discussed by the academic community and general public.

But all this changes with the World Wide Web. Anybody can put up anything. At first it was academic, scientific, and technical materials. Now, however, the Web is increasingly commercialized--it's a global marketplace. The consequence for us it this: search tools like Yahoo will retrieve everything out there that matches the search terms, whether or not it's suitable for academic purposes. There's little "pre-screening" for academic suitability.

It's like going into a large shopping mall, and having a servant retrieve everything that matches "Middle Ages" or "medieval." You'll get Myst, the board game Cathedral, some CDs with Gregorian chant, various comic books, a couple of scholarly paperbacks, some plaster gargoyles, reproductions of art, etc., etc. Obviously, most will not be relevant to an academic course project.

Your best bet in searching the Web is to go through "gateways" that have pre-screened what's out there and chosen what's suitable for our academic purposes. The prime example for this course is the Labyrinth server at Georgetown. It is currently the best gateway to quality information on the Middle Ages on the WWW. Other reputable Web sites include: Stanford Medieval Studies, University of Kansas, University of Chicago, University of Virginia.

In particular, I ask you to be wary of Web materials sponsored by the Society for Creative Anachronism (they tend to be found at addresses ending in ".com" rather than ".edu," though there are exceptions). There's a ton of it out there, and while some of it is based on responsible historical research, a lot of it is inaccurate, illiterate, and misleading.

Start reading and gathering information for the topic area of your final project. If you already have partners in mind for it, go ahead and start dividing up the work (i.e., 2 or 3 people can cover 2 or 3 times as much of the topic). The following assignment is just a minimum to keep you on track; please feel free to go beyond the scope of the assignment. The more you do now, the less you'll have to do at the end of the semester.

Specifically:

1. Consult at least two encyclopedias, subject dictionaries (not foreign language dictionaries), historical atlases, etc.

Note the bibliographical information of the source and the entries you read on a sheet or file to be turned in. (Keeping track of call numbers can be handy for research later in the process).

2. Search your topic in Griffin. Find at least 6 books that look like they might be useful. Browse through them, and assess their usefulness for your topic.

Note bibliographical information for each title and add several sentences of description and evaluation. See handout for examples.

3. Find at least 2 Web sites that look like they might be useful for you. Give the WWW address, a brief description of how you found the site, and what looks like it will be useful to you.