They are being BEAM-ed down

I really make myself laugh with some of these titles. Anyway, BEAM (More lasers i’m sorry) is a set of vocabulary that allows close interpretation of sources as an alternate to Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary sources. BEAM is more aligned with organizing sources by how they are being used rather than how they are written intrinsically. This is not an idea that I had heard of before I read the article about it, but it does present a better model for categorizing sources, and I have never been a big fan of Primary/Secondary/Tertiary source cataloging anyway.

A lot of my assignments in high school had to have a certain number of primary and secondary sources, which was always very irritating, as it was sometimes hard to find enough sources of the proper types to create a cohesive argument. However, if I was to apply the BEAM vocabulary, and if I had one or two sources for each letter in BEAM, then

Get it? it’s a beam!

you would be able to create an argument that has all of the pieces necessary to be convincing. This is at least another interesting way to consider the sources I use when I do research, and should be able to allow me to gather a greater number of useful sources, without trying to worry about having primary sources and secondary sources. As long as you have some Background, a few Exhibit pieces, a source or two to help your Argument be strong, and framing the whole thing with Method pieces is the basis for a strong argumentative essay, as well as something I am going to strive to do for future research assignments.