Librarians Are Helpful

Today, we had a change of scenery for my CTW class. Instead of our normal classroom, we met in the library and continued identifying sources for our research paper. Do you know what this means? MORE BOOLEAN SEARCHING!!

Source: Giphy

This time, I used composed a more advanced Boolean search: I truncated words with asterisks*, used “quotes” to search for phrases, and used OR to include other ways of saying the same thing. Here is the first search I did in the OmniFile database.

Source: N Kennedy

When I did this search, I only got 7 hits and none of them were really compelling or presented information that I wanted to talk about.  So, I consulted the librarian and told her what I was interested in: the differing perceptions of gender equality in athletics and academics. She helped me formulate this new and improved Boolean search.

Source: N Kennedy

This brought up a loads and loads of sources, and after sifting through all the hits, I saved 14 to read for later. To describe this process, I will borrow a phrase coined by Linda Flower (aka, use her as a method source): “construct a purpose” (Kantz 80). Instead of going in with a predetermined purpose for my research, I let the data guide me.  I constructed a purpose by adjusting my content goals and writing plans “as [my] understanding of the topic develop[ed]” (80).

But What Do I Do with All These Sources?

My goal is to synthesize these sources to generate a road map of the broader conversation about my topic. This will give me a bird’s eye view of the territory and allow me to see where/how I can integrate my own argument and analysis.

My argument in the broader conversation – Source: N Kennedy

How do I do this? Well, I can certainly tell you how NOT to do this. For this, I will now borrow from Margaret Krantz’s “Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively.”

I will NOT:

1. Read these sources as narrative stories, focussing on plot and characters (Krantz 72-73)
2. “Expect my sources to tell the truth” and accept all their ideas as valid (72)
3. Assume that the “facts” presented in the sources are only there for accuracy and comprehensiveness (72)

I WILL:

1.  Read sources rhetorically and consider the speaker (Encoder), the audience (Decoder) and the topic (Reality) of each article (74)
2. Analyze each source’s argument and consider other interpretations of the authors’ ideas (77)
3. Recognize that facts and opinions are essentially claims that authors use to persuade their audience (76)

Basically, I will keep my overall goal for gathering (@Michael Kleine) these sources in mind and read them with this lens. Hopefully, I find some interesting stuff!