The Elements of Library Research

What Every Student Needs to Know

Mary W. George

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781400830411
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Lehrmethoden

To do solid academic research, college students need to look beyond the computer search engine. This short, practical book introduces students to the important components of the information-seeking process. The Elements of Library Research provides a foundation for success in any research assignment, from a freshman paper to a senior thesis.
Unlike guides that describe the research process but do not explain its logic, this book focuses entirely on basic concepts, strategies, tools, and tactics for research--in both electronic and print formats. Drawing on decades of experience with undergraduates, reference librarian Mary George arms students with the critical thinking skills and procedures they need to approach any academic project with confidence.

• Ways to turn a topic into a research question
• Techniques for effective online searches
• How to evaluate primary and secondary sources
• When and how to confer with reference librarians and faculty
• How to avoid plagiarism
• Glossary of key terms, from Boolean search to peer review
• Checklists, timelines, and hints for successful research projects

1

Introduction to Research as Inquiry

Let me explain what this little book is and why I am writing it. It is not a guide to whipping up successful research papers from dribs and drabs of information. Nor is it a set of commandments or a list of random reference works. It is about the interplay of ideas (yours) with sources (from outside yourself) and about the nature and discovery of those sources. I want to persuade you, as a serious but uncertain student, that library research is not a mystery or a lucky dodge, but an investigation you control from start to finish, even though you cannot usually tell what sources you will discover. Like its twin, scientific experiment, library research is a form of structured inquiry with specific tools, rules, and techniques. Also like its twin, it is unpredictable, sometimes frustrating, but ultimately rewarding as you examine your findings, then add your own insights to make a compelling case. As a bonus, when you share your work—whether through writing, speaking, or technology—addressing one person or a wide audience, you create a new source, extending the cycle. There is no more fulfilling intellectual experience.

What do I mean by student and library in the previous paragraph? I want to reach anyone who feels anxious—or downright scared—when facing a task that involves seeking and weighing information. You may be starting your first research paper, your n^th term project, even your doctoral dissertation: if you worry that you are not going to find enough of the “right stuff,” then the ideas and suggestions in this book will put you at ease and back in charge. Each time you work through the library research process, regardless of how different your aim or subject is from your previous efforts, you will become more fluent. Soon you will see how to modify the method and what alternatives exist if you are missing a key fact or suspect that a source cannot be trusted. As with any other complex activity, repetition with variations will lead first to mastery, then to creativity.

Novices often think that unless they have a gigantic university library at their disposal, they will fail to find all the sources they need. Not so. A bigger collection is not necessarily a better one for a specific research project. Not only are tens of millions of reputable sources of all sorts now in digital form as licensed databases or free on the Web, but libraries can often obtain material from elsewhere within a few days. Unless and until you come up short in the nearby collections available to you—typically your school’s own library and your local public library—I urge you not to worry. But if you do conclude that you need more sources, speak with both your instructor (assuming you are doing a course-related research project) and a reference librarian about what you can do.

Likewise, do not assume dire consequences if your library does not have all the reference works and databases I mention. I name these titles simply as examples, not as necessary resources for everyone. Once you understand what each type of tool does, you can figure out—on your own or by asking—what your library has to offer for the job.

Moving from the Known to the New

When you are familiar with an activity because you have done it flawlessly in the past, then you do not give it much time or thought or emotion. Why would you, unless the outcome is especially significant, such as earning a high grade on a math exam tomorrow so that you can take calculus next term?

But if an activity is new to you—if it is familiar but a lot more complex than anything you have done in the past, if factors such as the setting or criteria for success are strange—then you will inevitably be unsure, anxious, and probably tempted to avoid the experience. Think about the first time you needed to figure out a big city’s public transportation system on your own, so that you could travel from point A to point B within an hour. It was stressful—right?—even if all the maps and signs were in English. Now imagine the first time you got behind the wheel of a car, presumably after learning dozens of rules and cautions in a driver’s education class. My guess is that although you felt somewhat uncertain about what to do and the order to do it in, you were so eager to get your permit that you remember the event as a stimulating rather than a harrowing experience.

These scenarios illustrate the range of research projects you will encounter in college and beyond, some completely foreign to you and others for which you have some background or experience. The trait they share is the hunt for “what’s out there,” a favorite phrase of teachers everywhere.

In the following sections I cover the purposes of research in general, the varieties of research, and the ways researchers communicate their findings. I start this way because I want to convince you that the library research process is part of a larger universe of inquiry. If you can identify the facets of any research study you encounter, and figure out how someone designed it (or could have designed it better), then you will be much readier for college-level research than most students, whether in a library or a laboratory. As you read the next few pages, keep in mind that your professors live and breathe these issues as they go about the business of creating new knowledge in their fields.

Reasons for Research

Before we examine the varieties and characteristics of research, we should consider why anyone does formal research in the first place. Here is a list of research goals I encounter frequently on a university campus, but they occur in other settings as well, such as in business, government, and professional organizations. Research serves to

1. Reveal the cause or causes of a phenomenon
2. Resolve an anomaly (something that doesn’t make sense)
3. Test a hypothesis or develop a theory
4. Verify or replicate someone else’s findings
5. Determine what a new instrument or technique can do
6. Adapt methods or results from one field to another
7. Observe or record an event as it occurs
8. Reproduce conditions from the past in the present
9. Understand human motivations for actions
10. Isolate factors and their interrelationships in a complex system
11. Predict or influence individual or group behavior
12. Improve the quality of life across cultures and populations
13. Analyze the components of a creative work

No doubt you can supply examples of each of these research incentives from your own reading and experience. I suggest you keep track of additional ones you come across from now on. My point is that although a researcher’s intent helps determine the specific methods he or she will use, all researchers share a deep, universal aim: to discover the truth about something that intrigues them.

Varieties of Research

Most people think about research in large categories labeled with the field of the researcher or the course that requires a research project. For instance, you might refer to historical research, scientific research, textual research, or sociological research. These phrases suffice for general communication about what is meant, and they are the ones you see and hear in the media. They are not, however, precise as to the way someone tackles a research problem. The following chart lists some, but by no means all, of the common approaches to investigation used in research projects (also frequently called research studies), with brief descriptions. I don’t dwell on any of them except the first—which is, after all, what this book is about. I simply want to lay out the cards so you will see how diverse the deck of inquiry is. The forms of research toward the top of the chart are the ones you are most likely to encounter during your first two years of college.

These methods overlap in real life—in fact, it’s unusual for a given project not to involve more than one of them. Furthermore, the qualitative, quantitative, and empirical approaches are umbrella terms that can be applied to other methods as well. For now, just be alert to this variety.

Research Method	Characteristics and Examples
Library	Involves identifying and locating sources that provide factual information or personal/expert opinion on a research question; necessary component of every other research method at some point
Experimental	Takes place in a dedicated environment, typically a laboratory, and involves specific equipment and procedural steps; molecular biological research to decode a species’ genome is an example
Explicatory	Entails a careful, close, and focused examination of a single major text, or of evidence surrounding a single complex event, in an attempt to understand one or more aspects of it—for instance, why a poem is pleasing, or the probable causes of an event
Field	Occurs wherever the phenomenon under study exists, meaning the researcher goes to that location; archaeological excavation is one type
Observational	Takes place either in a laboratory or in the field, but entails capturing an exact record of some behavior (of either animate or inanimate objects); child psychologists who watch infants interact do this sort of research. Note that researchers may be observers or participants in the phenomenon they are studying, as when an anthropologist lives in a remote village to record the language used by people during religious ceremonies
Interview	Includes any sort of conversation that addresses a specific experience or issue about which the interviewee is knowledgeable, involves questions prepared in advance, and is recorded in its entirety; oral history, for instance
Survey	Poses a series of questions to a group of people (usually a sample) with specific responses for individuals to choose from; usually captures demographic and socioeconomic information as well, to correlate with the responses; written questionnaires and telephone opinion polls are examples
Longitudinal	Follows a phenomenon over time; often used in educational or medical studies where the individuals in a group are periodically reexamined at specific intervals over many years
Archival	Involves the researcher in a close study of original documents—typically collected and retained by governments, organizations, or families—that exist in a unique location; genealogical research is a case in point
Qualitative	Designates any research whose results are captured in words, images, or nonnumeric symbols; for instance, research on dreams
Quantitative	Describes any approach where the phenomenon under study is captured via measurement and expressed in numbers that can be analyzed; opposite of qualitative research; econometric research on the international oil trade is an example
Empirical	Refers to studies using experiment or observation to test the validity of a phenomenon; less rigorously, refers to knowledge derived from experience, as when people assert that, based on empirical evidence, the sun will rise tomorrow morning
Theoretical	Entails speculation on the part of the researcher, and is usually based on the findings of other kinds of studies, in ...