Off The Shelf

We often get calls from learners who have been searching a Library database for articles on their topic and are getting few or no results. When that happens it is usually for one of two reasons: you are using the wrong words to describe your topic or you are in the wrong database. 

 One tool to help you find other words to describe your topic is the thesaurus link in the database you are searching. It is usually near the top of the page.

When a database gets a journal article it classifies it under different words or categories. If you use those words you will get better results. If you type the word you are using in search box for the the thesaurus, it will usually display cross references to the words the database uses to describe your topic.

For example you want to do research on alternative schools. You put the words alternative schools in your search box and get few results. You look that term up in the ERIC’s database thesaurus and you see they indicate to use the words nontraditional education instead. The link also gives you other related terms. Wow – this is great!

So the next time you search a Library database check out the thesaurus link in the database you are searching. Its a great way save some of your “brain power” having to think up different words to describe your topic!

-Robin

When many people think of research, they automatically think of books.  They’re big, packed with information, and fill library shelves.  But as you work on your degree at Capella, you may find yourself using very few of them.

This isn’t just because it’s hard for your Capella librarians to get ebooks to sit upright on a shelf. 

As you progress to higher degrees, books will be less likely to meet your research needs.  In fact, by the time you’re working on a doctoral degree, you may be using scholarly journal articles almost exclusively.  

This is because scholarly journals:

• are published faster than most books.
• often contain peer-reviewed articles.
• provide literature reviews in the field.
• cover single, specific research studies.

Books are still a great resource for research, but they do have their place.  Once you have developed a real understanding of your field, you may no longer need the general summaries that books often provide.

For more information about different sources, please see our guides:

Sources: What can you use for your research?
Evaluating Sources in Business and Technology
What are Peer-Reviewed Articles and How Can I Find Them (Flash, with Audio)

- Erin
 

Some eagle-eyed First Course learners remarked that PsychARTICLES and the Sage databases don’t have a scholarly articles limiter checkbox.

(For some background on this option, see our media piece: What are Peer Reviewed Articles and How Do I Find Them?)

The reason that Sage and PsycARTICLES don’t have the checkbox is that their material is all peer reviewed.  Of course, we shouldn’t just rely on a checkbox to do our thinking for us.  Even scholarly journals publish non-peer-reviewed elements such as editorial columns and book reviews, which can sneak their way into search results.

Those familiar with peer reviewed articles should be able to instantly recognize characteristics from our guide above:

• Always include references, footnotes or a bibliography of works cited
• Uses jargon of the discipline
• Reports new academic research studies, including methodology and data analysis
• Gives author’s title, affiliation, and usually contact information
• Has a long descriptive title
• Article is longer than five pages
• Very few advertisements or images in print version

Of course, you should always investigate the credentials of an author before you determine a work as credible.  Knowing how to determine a scholarly article by sight this way, however, will help you avoid making research roadblocks for yourself out of absent checkboxes.
Erika 

I just LOVE journal and search alerts.  Just this morning I was pleasantly surprised by most recent article on the subject of libary anxiety in my Google Reader! How COOL is that!

Ok maybe you are not interested in the topic of library anxiety, but what topics are you interested in? What journals? Everyday I get an alert for  the most recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education sent to my email, so I can keep up on what others in the field of higher education are doing.

So is this some “special” service that just librarians can get? No journal and search alerts are available to everyone at Capella through the Library databases. Here is a link to a one page guide that shows you how to set one up: Journal and Search Alerts.

So would you like the Table of Contents of the most recent issue of a particular journal or the most recent articles for a search on your topic to come into your email or reader?  The Capella librarians would love to help you set an alert up!

Share with others what your experience has been with journal and search alerts.

Let us know if you have set one up!

Robin

The higher you go with your education, the more likely it is that you’ll be using primary resources for your research. By the time you are working on a dissertation, you may be using primary resources exclusively. Primary sounds important, but what does it really mean?

Primary resources come up a lot in some fields, especially history. And in a field like history, identifying a primary resource is pretty easy. It’s an item (document, image, etc.) that is from the place and period you are researching. Old diaries, photographs, and newspaper stories are common examples.

In other fields, primary resources are more difficult to identify. In fields that are driven by experimental and survey research, primary resources are the data and reports produced from that original (primary) research.

Think of it in terms of layers of interpretation. A researcher creates a research study and then writes up the results for a journal article. They are the first people to touch that specific research study – they have created a primary resource.

Later, someone else reads the study and talks about it in a book chapter. They are one step away from the original research, so they are creating a secondary resource.

You can even have a third layer (tertiary resources), where someone has summarized all the secondary research. These are typically textbooks or encyclopedias.

Of course, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Every primary research article contains a literature review. That literature review is a mini-secondary resource that goes along with the primary research of the rest of the article. The researcher has to summarize what’s already gone on in the field in order to properly position her own research. When using a research article for a paper that requires primary resources, pay attention to what part of the article you are referencing. The quote you are using may actually be secondary resource material.

So, when you are considering a resource for your paper, think about how far removed it is from the original research event. Just as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl is a primary resource about World War II, so is Stanley Milgram’s research article Behavioral Study of Obedience about people willing to give intense electric shocks to strangers based on an authority figure’s instructions.

Note: Primary resources are not the same as seminal articles. Seminal has to do with the importance of the research to the development of the field. Primary resources can be seminal, but they can also be totally without influence.

- Erin

Okay, so I got your attention with that title. It’s not really like that, but there is a kernel of truth to the question: it can be very hard to limit your library search to articles that focus on the United States.

It was a question that came up several times at the Dallas colloquium. Many learners complained about trying to find research about the U.S., only to get result lists full of articles about China, Canada, and every country in between. They all wanted to know: how do you stop that from happening?

The short answer is you really can’t.

Here’s why:

The U.S. is a really big country that produces a ton of scholarly research. There are also hundreds upon hundreds of journals published in the United States that focus on domestic research. Because the U.S. is such a big piece of the research pie, authors don’t think to include the words in an article title or abstract. It almost goes without saying.

Compounding the problem is the sheer size of the United States. Many researchers confine themselves to studying something in a single state or city. They may write about crime prevention in Los Angeles or health care legislation in Florida. It’s basically impossible to include every major American place name in your search.

Foreign researchers only make the problem worse. Since the U.S. is so dominant in many research fields, researchers working in other countries often talk about the U.S. or include American research studies in their literature reviews.

So, what can you do?

Scan the titles on your result list. Chances are good that if an article does not mention another country in the title, then it’s probably about the U.S.

If you notice a particular country popping up a lot, tell the database to exclude it. This can remove articles that contain helpful comparisons, but it can also help you focus a search topic that is popular around the world. To do this, use the not. Here’s an example from Business Source Complete:

Any other quesitons?  Ask a Librarian.

-Erin

You may have seen the RefWorks email from the library or mentions of it in this blog.  Still, many learners who came to the Dallas colloquium weren’t sure what RefWorks could do for them.

We knew there’d be a lot of questions about RefWorks, so we had a librarian devoted just to RefWorks come with us to Dallas.  We also talked about RefWorks in all the Library and Writing Center sessions.  RefWorks came up in most conversations we had with learners over the course of the colloquium.

And what is the overall impression learners have of RefWorks?  Well, learners in the Finding Scholarly Articles session loved it so much they filled the room with applause!

If you weren’t at Dallas, you may wonder what all the hoopla is about.  Here are the benefits of RefWorks in a nutshell:

Organizing your Citations

• Quickly export citations from many of the library databases.
• Organize your citations into folders – by paper, course, topic, etc.  You can even put a single citation in several folders.
• Link back to the full text in the library database.
• Add notes to individual references to help you keep track of important information.

Creating Bibliographies

• Automatically create a bibliography in APA style. (You’ll need to proof-read it.)
• Use Write-N-Cite to automatically create in-text citations and reference lists in Word.
• Share a bibliography with others by posting it to a webpage.

For more information about RefWorks, check out our RefWorks Information Page (it’s linked from the library’s Databases A-Z page as well).

-Erin

Some of the Library staff are “on the road” this week in  hot… hot… hot Dallas! We of course are in a lovely air conditioned hotel and very busy teaching Library sessions, visiting cohorts and meeting one-on-one with Learners (its so nice to meet people in-person!)

So why would you want to schedule a 20 minute appointment to meet with a Librarian at Colloquium? Well if you are Track 1 learner you may just want a overview of the Library, maybe you are having trouble with a certain aspect of the Library. We can help!

If you are Track 2 or 3 you may want to meet with a Librarian to learn some advanced search techniques or some strategies for using the Library for you “looming” comprehensive exams.

Many Track 2 or 3 learners also come in to get a “jumpstart” on their potential dissertation question. 

So you can see there are many reasons you would want to put a 20 minute appointment with a librarian on your Colloquium schedule.

If you have met with a librarian at Colloquium perhaps you can share your experience!

Well I’m off to teach a session!

Robin