Beginning Your Research for Senior Design

1. Beginning Your Research for Senior Design Susan Boyd Engineering Librarian skboyd@scu.edu www.scu.edu UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

2. The Library’s Research Role in Your Senior Design Project Provides the scholarly background information to questions such as: • Has anyone else worked on a similar project? • If so, where can I read a related senior design thesis? • Is my idea unique? • Where’s the information that’s relevant to the project, so I don’t “remake the wheel?” • How do I do the research needed and cite the sources I used?

3. Depositing Your Senior Design Thesis in the Library’s Collection • Part of the SoE’s mission: “Scholarly activities that create new knowledge and advance the state of the art of technology.” • It’s required for your final grade. • The requirements/directions for library submission are online: http://libguides.scu.edu/ENGL181 • Besides submitting your senior design thesis, each member of your team must sign the “Senior (Undergraduate) Student Thesis Publication Agreement” which is provided at the URL above.

4. Open Access Restrictions vs. Sharing New Knowledge • On your publication agreement, if you do NOT agree to Open Access publishing, then your work cannot be shared outside of SCU, and you cannot share the URL to your thesis—such as on your resume. • This goes against the SoE’s mission to “advance the state of the art of technology,” because your research will NOT be searchable on the internet. • Scholar Commons (the library’s collection of SCU’s intellectual work) has a compromise solution—theses can be embargoed for 6 months, 1 year, or 2 years—after which the public (and not just the SCU community) can access your work. Use an embargo only IF your source of funding wants no Open Access for a limited time.