Images from: Georgia State University and Corpus Christi College
Category Archives: Archives and Students
The Great Research Disaster Version 2.0
First, the title of this post is hyperbolic. Hopefully.
Second, allow me to throwback to an earlier post with this gif:
Source: Giphy
Why exactly am I bringing back this particular image? Well, because it summarizes my mental state of being right now after turning in my argumentative research paper which focused on archival research and archival knowledge. In all, it was two parts good research, three parts attempted organization, two more parts hopefully sound arguments, and three parts shaky implementation of sources as support, background, and examples.
Outlining and organizing my arguments was not the problem for this essay, rather, my problem was making all the arguments I wanted to make – and being able to support them. Depth, instead of breath, is what I struggled with this last essay. In retrospect, I feel that my essay was actually a duology of two essays that were very relevant and connected to each other. I might have taken on more than I was able to handle, but hey, what’s done is done.
Moving onward then, for my multimodal translation of this research, I will definitely trim down what I have to say. I need to really narrow down my arguments/information to a point, and have fun doing it.
Posted in Archives and Students, Spring Blogs
Tagged archival research, archives, argumentative writing, undergrads
to Annotate to Annotate to Annotate
So, as of this Tuesday our class turned in our annotated bibliographies, which are, if you didn’t know, really annoying to say the least. It’s not that the process is necessarily hard, but reading the articles that you find is a really big time suck. Especially if you can’t understand what the author is saying in a single read.
I spent a lot of time reading.
But besides from that, what was the most difficult part of creating the annotated bibliographies was connecting the articles together. Comparing them, contrasting them, how they aligned with one train of thought, how they aligned with another. It was all really messy.
Source: Awesomely Luvie
So what I did was I started to write all the articles down on a piece of paper. Then I sorted them into different categories: archival research, modern undergraduate research, and archival research for undergrads. And what I ended up with was an outline for how I wanted to write my essay, the plotline for the narrative that I was going to create. Thus, while annotating was annoying, mostly because of the time it took to complete the annotations, it also proved to be extremely helpful to me overall.
Posted in Archives and Students, Spring Blogs
I’m Illiterate?
Source: Tumblr
As a disclaimer, I had no idea what information literacy was, at all. I had no idea that these two words could even be joined together to form a single phrase. I had no idea what this term could even refer to. And I definitely didn’t think that it had anything to do with me – or anything really, but we’ve established that I was clueless about this subject already. So, what is information literacy? (I’m asking because I am also assuming that you have no idea either.)
Information literacy is according to the Association of College & Research Libraries, essentially, a set of abilities requiring individuals to ‘recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information’ (ACRL). So, essentially, information literacy is a skill set identical to the one that archival researchers have and continue to advocate – locating, evaluating, analyzing, and effectively using your sources (the information) to support your arguments/viewpoints.
So am I as illiterate as I thought I was? Hopefully no, because it seems that all I need to do to become information literate, is to change the dialect in which I speak. I need to expand my vocabulary, and like that – bam.
I’m speaking plain English.
Posted in Archives and Students, Spring Blogs
Roadmap to Archives
Source: Giphy
Alright, so I’ve been talking about the archives, about research, about research skills, and undergraduates for a while now. I’m sure for anyone reading this, you’ve might have gotten bored with the whole “Wow, archives! Wow, undergrads! Wow, no information!” song and dance. But, please stick it out a little (actually, probably a lot) longer, for me? Thanks in advance.
Okay, so, we were asked by our professor (the whole class, that’s the ‘we’), to explain the “territory” (the subject) of our research and the gaps (literally, the gaps in knowledge) that we had observed when reading various sources for research purposes. Recap: I have been reading long articles, and trying very hard to finish homework up for this class, a bit unsuccessfully because I’m one or two annotated citations behind. But I digress.
Original Image: Barnes&Noble
Edited Image: K. Harada
The “territory” that I’ve been exploring is the realm of dusty books, the archives! Big surprise right? More specifically, I’ve explored the field of archival research and the available methods/methodology written accounts created by researchers. Furthermore though, I’ve also broadened this territory to include the modern day research methods which students are more exposed to, or the methods which are directed at students. The latter is more to illustrate the extent of the ‘undergrad desert’ that I have observed in archival research literature.
And it is this ‘undergrad desert’ that acts as my “gaps in knowledge”. The gaps that I’m seeing are the same that I saw before, which come as no great surprise. There is a lack of archival research literature, it appears that no researchers had really thought about writing down their processes. But furthermore, it seems like researchers never gave the thought of student research the time of day. Archival research literature almost entirely neglects to include undergraduates, focusing more on academics and graduate students. And even when research skill literature does focus on undergrads, often these skills are not explicitly related to the archives/they don’t provide the instruction needed for archival research.
So, I’m therefore planning on further staking it out in the ‘undergrad desert’, and expanding on how this desert might be crossed.
Posted in Archives and Students, Spring Blogs
Tagged archival research, archives, gaps in knowledge, research, undergrads