Where I Go And What I Go There For

I was trying to figure out what to write. I had a big paper due for my 20th century British Short Fiction class and the uncanny (unhomely) objects in Elizabeth Bowen's short fiction intrigued me. Items such as shoes and fireplaces have evil powers (like Jamie, I guess I was into the devil) in her short stories. The ominous machinations of Bowen's "things" often accompany characters' attempts to save or find a home. I saw the possibility of connecting the modernist attempt to cope with an unstable environment with Masahiro Mori's Uncanny Valley graph. I used scholarly articles on thing theory and Bowen. When I read a relevant piece of scholarship, I would go to the bibliography and look into finding the source materials that the author used. As was mentioned in our readings, I employed a hierarchical approach to information gathering: Internet, to school library, to major library. I started with Google Scholar a lot of times. At my school we didn't have a search device like Addison. I wish I could've gone to the Harry Ransom center (also mentioned in our readings) because it houses a major Elizabeth Bowen archive. My research methods worked and I still enjoy reading the paper I wrote.

Blog Post 1: Kevin, the Reluctant Tech Convert

My first real experience with research was in 11th-grade AP English. I had to team up with 3 other people to find what we could on Sylvia Plath...and we had to present the paper. Unfortunately, we had few of the resources available today in 1994. The school library nor the local library presented us with many options other than primary sources--and the ones available were not so helpful. I viewed research as an unfruitful pan for gold long after I was finished with Ms. Plath.

By the time I finally became serious about completing my undergrad in 2005, the research landscape had undergone a huge shift from limited print resources that were clutched stingily to the hearts of faraway universities...to the great information share of the vast caches of internet sources that sprouted in the ether. My freshman year, I was lost in unfamiliar territory. My experiences with computers were at that point fairly limited. I'm still learning, but I've worked hard to get up to speed.

I began with Wikipedia, though unlike Jamie, I tended to use it as a tertiary source in almost everything I turned in. My early profs didn't seem to mind so much--but after the widely-reported flaw in Wikipedia's review of credentials (whereby an unqualified hack altered hundreds of articles from Baywatch to heart surgery)--I stopped using it as anything other than a quick review of a given subject.

I felt like a research beginner for a long time, much like Dana , Hayley, and Michelle feel now (though I suspect a touch of extra humility, since they seemed to have a decent approach in the works;). By the time I finished my BA, however, I felt like I had a pretty good idea where to look. I made a special trip to VT's wonderful Newman Library to research a paper that ended up having legs in several different directions. The paper, "The Shared Cycle: Daoist Principles in the Appalachian Writings of James Still," helped me complete an independent study, was cropped and submitted to become a finalist at WVU's Annual Literature Symposium (the link direct to Concord's writeup of the previous year, as I could not find the article for 2010), was also extended and greatly altered for an application to VT's Philosophy MA program (a failed app, as it turned out)...and was finally reconfigured for my VT English application (thankfully a successful one).

Throughout the course of the research I've done thus far, I've familiarized myself with JSTOR, the MLA International Bibliography, Google Scholar, and a few others (many of which are mentioned in the Towheed article. I intend to continue use of these resources, but I'm also excited about the additional resources offered at VT, such as Summon and Addison.

For my upcoming research paper, I plan to start with these online resources, then move on to print. As of now, I think my subject matter will likely be William S. Burroughs (one of my favorite authors/miscreants from the Beat Generation) though the amount of material out there might end up redirecting me.

Mike Roche: Blog Post 1

In my own writing, research is the cure to my writer's block. Often, I will find I can't complete the next line of a poem because there seems to be no information on the topic left in my head on the particular subject I'm writing about. When this happens, it's usually a good time for me to go looking for interesting facts. If I'm writing a poem about astrophysics I will usually Google it and see what kind of stuff shows up, or like Jamie mentioned in his blog, use Wikipedia. It's not usually a lot of information I need, just some clarification here or a tidbit there to give me some inspiration and keep me writing. And as we read in the reading, Wikipedia is frequently updated; so it can often reflect recent changes in a scientific topic like astrophysics.

The way I research for this class will be different, though. I've learned from the readings that I need to start paying more attention to my sources' credibility, especially when writing a scholarly research paper. This week's reading emphasized the need to verify the credibility of our sources. One helpful way to evaluate it, I found, is by looking at the publishing company. Is it a traditionally "big-name" one like Harper-Collins? Or if it's not, is it at least a university press? Just noticing this stuff will be very helpful when I am collecting sources for research papers.

Jamie's flawed research skills (not to be emulated) Blog Post One

Honestly, my research skills--at least for my fiction--are rudimentary at best. When I want to add verisimilitude to my story I go full cheese and look up the article of interest on Wikipedia. Generally whatever information I find there I'll work in as description or exposition and it's enough to satisfy me. (If, however, I need to be more specific, I go old school: I take a trek to the local library and check out books on the topic).

For research papers, it's kind of a different story. As an example, in an undergrad history course (History of Witchcraft and Magic), I was assigned a paper on a fallen angel and all-around charming lad: Satan. Besides opening the Wikipedia article (and using that article's citations as a jump-off point), I went to Google Scholar and typed in the keyword (to wit: Satan) and up cropped about seventeen thousand articles, books, and essays on the guy.

As for the essay for this class: I plan on using Google Scholar, of course, and Wikipedia to get an idea of my topic, but I really want to try Addison and see what that's all about. (Also, Michelle brought up Project Gutenberg, which I had completely forgotten). And about the topic itself? Who knows. Sometime between then and now there'll be something I read or something I learn in class that intrigues me, something I don't know much about, and that'll be my catalyst.

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).

Hayley's First Blog Post

My research style up to this point has been quite rudimentary. I mostly searched in Addison, and tried to stick with JSTOR or Project Muse as an undergraduate, because I did not know a whole lot about evaluating information sources and wanted to be sure that what I was using was scholarly.

To begin researching for the wiki and the ENGL 5014 essay, I plan to use Summon—the “brand-new ‘library search engine.’” This is an especially attractive resource for me, because, as an undergraduate here at Virginia Tech, Summon did not exist yet. I know I want to research in the field of Medical Humanities, or illness in literature, so I hope that with thought, time, and Summon I will be able to refine this broad research interest into a manageable topic that fascinates me. Once I find this topic, and a few search results that seem dependable, I will begin evaluating/analyzing the information resources each result comes from, using, for example, the site (http://olinuris.library.cornell.edu/ref/research/skill26.htm) included in Module 2 for guidance. I will also use the specialized collections that were suggested to me when working on the Module 2 assignment: “Humanities International Complete,” and “Literature Research Center,” as well as related journals I already know of: “Literature and Medicine” and “Journal of Medical Humanities,” which Summon linked to here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/104920/. This site is very exciting for me, as it includes all articles that were published in the journal from 1997 on. Also, I would like to complement the scholarly journal articles I find with novels—which Module 2 described as primary sources—that depict different facets of medicine, illness, and dying.

Michelle's First Blog Post

Currently, I have very little to no research style. I haven’t needed to conduct scholarly research in years. However, I have researched topics of my own interest outside of the academic sphere and have used primarily online search engines such as Wikipedia and Google. I was forced to pay more attention to my search and research methods while preparing application materials for MFA programs. I implemented quotation marks as a method to pare my search results to the exact criteria I specified.

The readings for Module 2 have reintroduced some research strategies such as utilizing the – and + signs (from the Towheed reading) when limiting search criteria for online search engines. I was also introduced to brand new research techniques and resources, such as Project Gutenberg, and The Library of Congress. I have already used these two sources to seek information on Sarah Grand, a writer I am focusing on in a research paper for my Genre Studies course.

For my Genre Studies paper I intend initially on locating a myriad of sources in order to decide on the focus of my paper. In this primary search I will locate some of Sarah Grand’s articles and novels offered via Project Gutenberg, and explore JSTOR and other article databases through Virginia Tech’s library website. This module introduced me to the difference between VT’s library Addison and Summons search mechanisms. I will most likely use both to locate physical and online materials for my paper.

Then I will narrow my research after identifying a topic. I will maintain a research log as the Towheed reading encouraged, which was a new idea to me. I look forward to using this course to continue improving the way in which I research and organize my approach to writing scholarly papers, particularly my Genre Studies research paper.