wsdb 291
library research workshop
Fall 2025
TO FIND THESE SLIDES & MORE:
Google: womens studies concordia library
your subject librarian: susie.breier@concordia.ca
ZOOM office hours most Tuesdays 3-5, or by appointment
Text
ZOOM & H-1132 office hours:
Tuesdays
3:30-5:30 pm
OR by appointment
AskUs Desk
Webster LB building:
most Tuesdays 1-3
most Fridays 4-5
pronouns: she/her/elle
WHERE/HOW CAN
YOU FIND ME?
Google:
women's studies concordia library
OR.....
locate me on the
concordia library website
library.concordia.ca
library.concordia.ca
under women's studies find:
today's CONTEXT:
You are about to submit a PROPOSAL for your final TERM PAPER. Your guidelines tell you to:
- "Attach a preliminary BIBLIOGRAPHY of 3-5 peer-reviewed SCHOLARLY articles or books that seem relevant to your interpretive problem..."
- locate "...DISAGREEMENTS among scholars, GAPS in knowledge"
- follow customary scholarly CITATION format (ie MLA or APA) ...and carefully acknowledge your sources."
-
learners are encouraged to make use of technology, including generative artificial intelligence tools, to contribute to their understanding of course materials...
-
Material drawn from ChatGPT or other AI tools must be acknowledged... and cited appropriately
..in your syllabus, generative ai guidelines tell you:
What do YOU want to cover today?
tell me here:
yOUR AGENDA
BUT FIRST....
NEED HELP WITH ANY OF THE
AGENDA ITEMS I PROPOSED?
ask questions - GET HELP:
at the AskUs desk
via chat
via email
by phone
need assistance beyond a quick chat, and/or have a bit of time to plan?
your subject librarian: susie.breier@concordia.ca
ZOOM office hours most Tuesdays 3-5, or by appointment
Text
ZOOM & H-1132 office hours: most Tuesdays
3:30-5:30 pm
OR by appointment
AskUs Desk
Webster LB building:
most Tuesdays 12-1
most Fridays 3-5
pronouns: she/her/elle
writing assistance at the library and the university
TUESDAYS
but also:
Text
SimoNe de Beauvoir Institute
Feminist library & Learning Centre
ER building, 2155 Guy Street, 6th floor
monday-thursday: 10 am - 7pm
contact: isabelle.lamoureux@concordia.ca
and also:
- ACCESS resources at Concordia and beyond
- FIND material that is RELEVANT to your topic / problem
- Trace scholarly CONVERSATIONS using "Cited by" in Google Scholar
- Make sure material is SCHOLARLY / peer-reviewed / academic
- Enter KEYWORDS in Library Databases (search strategies)
- Learn how to use and acknowledge AI TOOLS
- Format your CITATIONS (APA / MLA) & use tools like ZOTERO
yOUR Agenda
accessing resources at concordia & beyond
Search for library books, ebooks, articles and films
what if the library doesn't have it ONLINE?
request a book and pick it up later....
or use the call number and locate button to find it
what if the library DOESN'T have it at all?
search for it in any library worldwide:
... and simply request it!
but you CAN'T borrow ebooks from other libraries!!
find scholarly articles or books
related to your topic / problem
where wouldyou search?
tELL your CLASSMATES
Search for library books, ebooks, articles and films
but go beyond sofia to search for topics
reminders:
- Use the readings, authors and literature you already know...
- and explore those to the fullest!
- Use Google (or your favourite tool, including AI if you want) to get smarter about your topic
- and THEN:
search in
Women's STUDIES databases
my tentative topic:
citational politics
I recently encountered compelling works by scholars like Eve Tuck and Katherine McKittrick relating to citational justice politics in feminist, anti-colonial and black studies scholarship, as well as in the Cite Black Women movement...
quotations/ideas from these scholars of interest to me include:
This is a challenge for all of us: Reflect on the way you approach referencing the work of others in your own writing, presenting and thinking. Whose work do you build on to make arguments ... Who are you citing, and why do you cite them (and not others)?
Eve Tuck, K. Wayne Yang, Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández,"Citation Practices" Critical Ethnic Studies, April 2015...[B]ibliographies and endnotes and references and sources are alternative stories that can, in the most generous sense, centralize the practice of sharing ideas about liberation and resistance and writing against racial and sexual violence.
Katherine McKittrick,"Footnotes (Books and Papers Scattered about the Floor)", Dear Science and Other Stories,2021but also:
… I do not believe that citation, as a practice that includes or excludes, is useful. I am not interested in citations as quotable value.
Katherine McKittrick,"Footnotes (Books and Papers Scattered about the Floor)", Dear Science and Other Stories,2021
I have spent most of my career in education trying to convince non-Indigenous people to read Indigenous people.
Now …. unsurprisingly surprised by how demonstratively settlerish their reading is.
....
I forgot that people read extractively, for discovery….
I forgot that all these years of relation between settler and Indigenous people set up settlers to be terrible readers of Indigenous work.
Eve Tuck @tuckeve Oct. 8, 2017 "To Watch the White Settlers"
- When and how do citational justice politics, intended as a form of resistance, become tools of prescription or invasive appropriation and extraction instead?
- How do these approaches to citation intersect (or not) with seminal 21st century feminist writings by authors such as bell hooks (feminist theory from margin to center) or Audre Lorde (dismantling the master's house)?
my tentative question/problem
This will take lots of searching and various strategies to explore... but here is one example:
SEARCH EXAMPLE
("citational politics" OR "citational justice" OR "citational practices" OR "politics of citation")
AND
(feminis* OR gender* black OR indigenous OR bipoc OR justice OR resistance)
but aLSO:
a simpler search example:
now how can you access / download articles you found?
search EXAMPLE:
I want to find articles that engage with (ie that cite) bell hook's book: Feminist theory: from margin to center, but that also discuss my topic: citational politics/practices
scholarly conversations in google scholar
citational politics OR practices
findit@concordia TIP:
scholarly / Peer-reviewed / academic
how can you know???
In some Library Databases you can use a checkbox OR FILTER:
peer-reviewed articles checklist
anatomy of a typical
scholarly research article
TEST YOURSELF:
is it academic / scholarly /
peer-reviewed?
which one(s) is/are scholarly?
link:
link:
which one(s) is/are scholarly?
This is a resource aimed at practitioners and researchers, but it is not written by an academic describing a research study or a theoretical framework. Though it casually refers to other studies, it does not seriously engage with other academic research and has NO BIBLIOGRAPHY!
This IS an academic/scholarly/
peer-reviewed article. Important clues: academic language, author draws on scholarly theories and outlines their own. Long BIBLIOGRAPHY of references. You can look up the journal Sexualities and find out that is peer-reviewed.
How to properly enter your KEYWORDS in Library Databases
search strategies
| TIP | WHAT IT DOES | EXAMPLE |
|---|---|---|
|
AND |
Combines concepts. Limits how many results your search produces |
police AND violence |
|
OR |
Allows for synonyms or alternative terms. Increases the number or results your search produces. |
violence OR brutality |
|
* |
Near the end of a word, retrieves all words that start with the letters entered. Increases the number of results a search produces | Canad* (retrieves Canada, Canadian) |
| “ ” | For two words or more, search for an exact phrase only, rather than each keyword separately. Limits how many results your search produces | “systemic racism” (retrieves systemic racism, but not systemic oppression related to racism) |
search tips & tricks
standard library article databases
google scholar strategies:
- use OR for alternative terms
- use quotation marks " " for phrases
- DON'T use AND (it is implied)
- DON'T use * ( happens automatically)
in ebsco article databases:
in google scholar:
("citational politics" OR "citational practices" OR "citation politics" OR "citation practices"OR "politics of citation")
AND
(feminis* OR black OR indigenous OR bipoc OR justice OR resist* OR gender*)
("citational politics" OR "citation practices" OR "politics of citation") (feminism OR black OR indigenous OR bipoc OR justice OR resistance OR gender)
example of a keyword
combination in socindex
search tips & tricks for
library article databases
boolean operators, truncation, phrase searching:
another search example in this handout:
(YouTube, 7 mins)
Developing your search strategy: VIDEO
search strategy tip: keywords are not the only thing to think about!
Picking your topic takes strategy too
YouTube video, 3 mins
using, acknowledging & citing ai tools
from your syllabus
APPENDIX B: GENERATIVE AI GUIDELINES
In this course, learners are encouraged to make use of technology, including generative artificial intelligence tools, to contribute to their understanding of course materials, under the circumstances outlined below. However, to achieve favorable results with generative AI, it is essential to invest time in building knowledge in the target subject and refining prompts, as this enables learners to produce more accurate output while validating its accuracy and relevance to the topic at hand.
Material drawn from ChatGPT or other AI tools must be acknowledged; representing as one’s own an idea, or expression of an idea, that was AI-generated will be considered an academic offense.
Students must submit, as an appendix with their assignments, any content produced by an artificial intelligence tool, and the prompt used to generate the content. Any content produced by an artificial intelligence tool must be cited appropriately. The MLA and APA are now providing information on citing generative AI.
Questions about this?
beyond chatgpt: AcadeMic AI
AcadeMic AI research tools
formatting referencES:
Zotero
& citation guides
what's the simplest way to properly cite?
it depends.
Start by picking a citation style
and consulting a:
use a citation style guides:
typical examples:
in-text citations (APA style)
Hakkinen and Akrami (2014) found that “individuals are receptive to climate change communications, regardless of ideological position” (p. 65).
Research shows that people from any ideological background are open to hearing about climate change (Hakkinen & Akrami, 2014).
typical examples:
Bibliography (APA style)
see this sample paper with a reference list on p. 17
What about
automatic citation tools
instead of style guides ?
automatic citation tools
Quick Citation Generators
(for example MyBib, Citation Machine, or those provided within databases like EBSCO, Google Scholar, Sofia)
* Make sure to double check your generated citations - they are not always correct! Use the Library's APA citation style guides to make sure all the required elements of the citation are present and correctly formatted.
automatic citation tools
Concordia Library provides support for Zotero.
automatic citation tools
Citation Management SOFTWARE
(for example RefWorks, Mendeley, EndNote, Zotero....)
primary sources
bonus material
primary source
=
a source that provides first-hand testimony or direct evidence concerning a topic
=
the object(s) of your study
=
can be almost anything, depending on the CONTEXT!
what is a primary source?
historical
can be PRIMARY sources?
typical primary sources
- newspaper articles
- diaries
- blogs, tweets & other social media posts
- films / videos
- court transcripts
- laws, bills, government publications
- NGO reports
locating primary sources will depend on what kind you are seeking, but see other library subject guides, such as:
WSDB 291 (Fall 2025)
By susie breier
WSDB 291 (Fall 2025)
Library Workshop slides for WSDB 291 Contemporary Issues in Women’s Studies, Professor Antonopoulos
