Dom Taylor
Philosophy, Religion, Catholic Studies, and Peace & Conflict Studies Librarian at the University of Manitoba
My hope is for you to experience the library as something that is:
Useful: it helps with your research and university experience.
Usable: it is not difficult to figure out.
Desirable: you enjoy your experience in the library or using library systems.
Aside from this, I want to make questions like, "How do I know what I know?", "How is authority and/or credibility established?", and, "What perspectives have been excluded or included in this information?" more prevalent in your research.
In a sense, information is everywhere, it is whatever informs you. Here are some examples of information:
Tree rings
Picture books
Audio recordings
Academic/scholarly publications
We will mostly focus on this last type of information.
In order for something to inform you and to be useful to your needs, you must have some idea of how to interpret it.
For example, you need to know something about trees in order to use tree rings as information to figure out the age of a tree.
The same goes for scholarly information.
What do you need to know in order to find scholarly information?
Library searching
Internet searching
vs.
Library catalogue
Academic databases
Scholarly journal articles
Books
Data + Stats
Google Scholar
(mostly) non-scholarly info
(mostly) scholarly info
Pay wall
Adapted from UoM Librarian Kyle Feenstra's (2017) diagram
(mostly) scholarly info
Most scholarly journals are peer-reviewed. In fact, many of your instructors may ask you to use mostly or only peer-reviewed scholarly information. Does anyone know what peer review is?
A peer reviewed source, such as an article, has been put through a publication process that involves the review of the article by a scholar in a similar field.
Using their field expertise, reviewers assess the article according to standards, some of which are field-specific (e.g., CASW Code of Ethics or qualitative research methodologies).
Authors of peer-reviewed sources, often have to make revisions in light of comments and criticisms made by reviewers. Peer-reviewed sources are vetted for quality. Not always perfect, but generally good indicator of information quality.
This is an example from Academic Search Premier's Thesaurus (EBSCOhost database)
You can go to a relevant Subject Guide
Provide you with field-specific information and resources:
Phrase searching: most search engines allow for phrase searching. This means that you can search for whole phrases (e.g., "child welfare") instead of individual words (e.g., "child" + "welfare"). Just put the phrase you want to search in quotation marks. This will help limit your results!
**You can find some video tutorials on search strategies here
Boolean Operators (AND/OR/NOT): These are words that cause search engines to modify their behaviour according to the given word or "operator." Let's look at this diagram to get a better idea.
Trauma
"Social Work"
A search for trauma AND "social work" will find results that contain both terms and will exclude results that only have one of the two terms.
Trauma
"Social Work"
A search for trauma OR "social work" will find results that contain either of the search terms. This will generate more results. Handy for synonyms.
A search for trauma NOT "social work" will find results that contain trauma but do NOT contain "social work." Use this sparingly and play around with it.
Trauma
"Social Work"
Limit to peer-reviewed and full text online
Limit to resource type (e.g. articles)
Limit by publication date
Limit to location if you want print resources
There are plenty of Academic Libraries that use a version of the CRAAP test. My take was inspired by this particular one from Western University.
= online
**Look at the resources listed in the above slide for more examples (e.g., how to cite sources with multiple authors and electronic sources)
All of the sources you cite in your article (with the exception of personal communications) should be listed in your References.
Long, D., & Dickason, O.P. (2011). Visions of the
heart : Canadian aboriginal issues (3rd ed.). Don Mills, ON, Canada: Oxford University Press.
Stiegelbauer, S. M. (1996). What Is an Elder? What Do
Elders Do? First Nation Elders as Teachers in Culture-Based Urban Organizations. Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 16(1), 37-66. Retrieved from http://www3.brandonu.ca/cjns/16.1/Stiegelbauer.pdf
If something is not available at WNC or UoM Libraries, you can order it from other libraries (throughout the world) through Document Delivery.
Go to the "Writing Resources" for good research tips and handouts! Also, I will be adding some Social Work Specific resources on the Social Work Subject guide.
The "Student Supports and Services" section has some helpful information. It's best to get an early start on this.
By Dom Taylor
An overview of finding, evaluating, using, and organizing information in an academic library setting. Aimed at graduate level research in Social Work.
Philosophy, Religion, Catholic Studies, and Peace & Conflict Studies Librarian at the University of Manitoba