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RESEARCHING A VARIETY OF FORMATS

As students become more accustomed to the ease of finding information freely available on the Internet, are they neglecting to use other important materials such as peer-reviewed journal articles and scholarly books and encyclopaedias? And, are they neglecting to critically evaluate the materials they do find? use this lesson plan to help your students learn to find information using a variety of sources, not just the internet.

INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES

INSTRUCTOR PREPARATION

  1. Help your students choose an appropriate research topic.
  2. Review the research project/term paper you are assigning and how this exercise is a step towards completion of the larger research project.
  3. Explain and show an annotated bibliography. For an example, see:
    http://www.crk.umn.edu/library/links/annotate.htm
  4. Make arrangements with your school librarian to give an instructional workshop on searching various formats.

STUDENT PREPARATION

Have students review the following Library publicaitons:
  1. Finding Periodical Articles
  2. Finding references in the Library
  3. Newspaper Sources
  4. Evaluating What You Have Found

ASSIGNMENT

  1. Complete the TILT online tutorial and accompanying quizzes.
  2. Create a bibliography of 10 items on your research topic. The list must contain at least 6 of the following:
    1. Book
    2. Magazine article
    3. Journal article
    4. Newspaper article
    5. Subject encyclopaedia
    6. Internet document
    7. Government document
    8. Nonprint media (video, microfilms, etc.)
    9. Primary sources (letters, diaries, journals, etc.)
    10. Interviews
  3. Annotate each item inn your bibliography. Include in your annotation a brief description and evaluation of each item. Use the evaluation criteria discusses in TILT (module 3) - i.e. author expertise; timeliness of information ; publisher's purpose; reviews and content.
  4. Record the library source (such as periodical indexes, reference sources and library catalogues) you used to find each item in the bibliography. Include your search strategies (what terms you used to find the item, for example). Make a note of which library sources were most helpful and why.
If you have any queries or concerns, please contact
Library Assistant, Information Services and Resources
Last Updated: November 4, 2011