How Do I Get Started?

1. How Do I Get Started? Creating a search strategy: Module for first year undergraduates

2. Who are You? • First Year undergraduates at Emerson College taking a required interdisciplinary research and writing course. • Course title: “Staging American Women: The Culture of Burlesque”. Image used under CC license from Moggs Oceanlane http://www.flickr.com/photos/moggsoceanlane/3361128840/in/photostream/

3. Overall Program • To improve the research, information use, and citation skills of first year students in their immediate work. • Introduce and acclimate first year students to the library and its resources to instill research and investigation practices for lifelong learning.

4. The Modules • How to formulate a research question, break it down, and begin the search. • How to find books and reference materials on a topic and read call numbers in the library. • Tips and tricks of database and OPAC searching. • How to evaluate the validity and usefulness of (online and database) information. • Appropriate use of information and sources. • Questions and review.

5. Learning Outcomes: Module One • Break down a research question into key words and synonyms for searching. • Become familiar with research topic vocabulary by searching online reference resources. • Choose discipline-appropriate databases and online resources and use our keywords and topic vocabulary to search them. • Use the thesaurus and other tools to find subject terms used by an online database.

6. On with the show! Image used under CC license from daskerst, http://www.flickr.com/photos/daskerst/2256561258/

7. Strategize! • When starting your research, you want to form a question to answer and break it down into searchable pieces. • We might think of these terms as keywords or key topics. • It helps to think of synonyms, both broad and specific; this will help you broaden and narrow your search later.

8. First step: Breaking down a question • What were the similarities and differences between burlesque performances in the United States and Great Britain in the 1800s? Image used under CC licence from M@nnie http://www.flickr.com/photos/manus/2218175249/

9. Next step: Know your subject! • Sometimes knowing more about your topic can help you with your search. • Reference books in the reference section (we’ll talk about that next time). • Online reference resources: Wikipedia and Credo Reference. • Wikipedia, really? • Yes, but remember: ONLY use these as a jumping off point!

10. Wikipedia • Let’s search the term “Burlesque”. What do we find? • General information on the history of Burlesque. • Important figures and performers in Burlesque. • List of books, articles, Websites about Burlesque. • All of these things can help you to form a question in the first place, refine your original question, or simply broaden your search. • REMEMBER: Don’t use Wikipedia as a source in your final bibliography. Think of it as a helper to guide you to better sources. Image from http://www.wikipedia.org

11. Credo Reference • Similar to Wikipedia, but much broader in scope: includes entries from several kinds of professionally created dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc. • Let’s search “Burlesque”. • It can give us the same type of information as Wikipedia, but it can give us MORE of it from many sources. • Available on Library Webpage, Databases A-Z Image from http://corp.credoreference.com/

12. Keyword Brainstorm Chart

13. Ta Da! The End Librarian: Lisa Molinelli, lisa_molinelli@emerson.edu Image from George Eastman House http://www.flickr.com/photos/george_eastman_house/3122870673/

14. Assessment • Non-graded pretest given to students before library instruction begins to assess what they already know about library resources and search process. • After each session, non-graded quiz posted on class’ online class space to be completed for credit before next session. • Students’ “final paper” bibliographies will be graded by the library instructor as well as the professor.