Dana - Blog Post #1

My research method is elementary at best. As an undergraduate at VT I used Newman library search tools like Addison but never became proficient in the site itself. Like Michelle, I'm fond of Google and Wikipedia as starter sites for personal research. When it comes to scholarly research however, I'm a hard-copy kind of girl. I prefer books as references and will choose those over an online database or journal article any day. Consequently, this has caused me a considerable amount of research grief in the past and has severely limited the kinds of research I've allowed myself to explore.

The screencast in Module One of the Newman library homepage enlightened me to all the ways I failed to use my own library as an undergrad. Module Two's reiteration and deeper discussions of Addison and Summon by way of tutorial links built on the general information of Mod One and gave me a better idea as to what kind of research each tool focuses on. Also like Michelle, I found Towheed's reminder of how to refine Google searches by ~, +, and - functions to be helpful.

As far as my own research goes, to get a vague and general start I'll probably begin with a generalized masculinities search on Google Scholar since my interest is interdisciplinary in nature. I'd like to get a brief overview of what research is out there concerning perceptions of masculinity in American literature. Because masculinities and femininities as a comparative study is generally new, I may be limited in my research to new articles. Dependent on publication dates and the availability of sources, I'll narrow my literature focus based on either on author or decade and then pursue a Summons search. I'm not sure I will indulge in Towheed's suggestion of joining a research community since I've never tracked my own research trajectory before. However, I am interested in charting my bibliographical findings by way of either Endnotes or RefWorks (probably the latter since it doesn't seem to require software).