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Hi, Class.
I'm going to take you on a tour of the rough draft worksheet for your final project. I'll
use one source as an example. We're going to use an article from EBSCOhost, so we can
look at EBSCOhost at the same time.
The rough draft worksheet is complicated, but I hope it walks you through the process
of finding, citing and annotating your sources. I'm using a version of the worksheet from
a section of English 1 that's working on general topics. For those of you writing on literature,
this example looks more at how you'd search for information on the psychological, sociological,
historical or other aspect of the work you're writing about, if that makes sense. You can
always ask a librarian about which database might be good for your topic.
Now, I'm going to go to EBSCOhost to start my research. I go to the Library home page,
then article databases, then Academic Search Complete. If you're off campus, you'll need
to enter your MySolano user name and password here.
I'll just look in Academic Search Complete at first, though remember that EBSCO has many
other databases that may be good as well, including their ebook database. Academic Search
Complete is an all-purpose, multi-subject academic database. It has a lot of academic
journals, and quality magazines and newspapers. If you click here on "choose databases," you
can see other EBSCO databases.
OK, here we are. I'm going to start with a general search, antibacterial soap. Then I'll
look at how many results I get and see how I can narrow the search to get good results.
OK, 573 results. The first one actually looks good. Look at the Subjects: soap, antibacterial
agents, drug resistance. I might be able to use those subject headings later. Scrolling
down, I see an article in Spanish; you can limit the language to English in EBSCOhost
in Advanced Search. I also see an article that says "check article linker for more information."
This means EBSCOhost doesn't have the text of the actual article. If I click that link,
it checks Solano's other databases for that publication. Now, it takes me to Proquest
which does have a copy. I'll tell you this almost never happens for me; usually I go
to a link that says the article isn't available.
I'm going to limit my search to full text, over here, since I got a good number of results
and they look relevant to my question. That takes me down to 263 results, removing about
half of them. Now if I scroll down and look at the options on the left toolbar, I see
that I have 167 academic journal articles, 72 magazines, and some newspapers and trade
publications. This kind of breakdown is typical in Academic Search Complete; in Proquest or
another newspaper database you'd see many more newspaper articles.
I'm going to open both the subject headings to see what I have. You can click "show more"
to see all of them. Be aware that if you click more than one, it does an "OR" search. Remember
the Boolean operators? So you'll end up with all the articles on antibacterial agents and
all the articles on hand washing, for example. I'm just going to click on "antibacterial
agents." Most of our top articles are still there.
Now, a word about bias. I happen to have a strong opinion that antibacterial soap is
no more effective than regular soap and is ecologically bad. This may not actually be
the best topic for me, because I may tend to pick articles that support what I already
believe instead of the best articles. Something we care about can make a good topic for a
paper because we're motivated to learn more about it, but there's a risk of what's called
confirmation bias - that we'll seek out information that confirms our existing beliefs instead
of doing our research with a truly open mind.
Looking at our results, I see some academic journal articles that are too technical for
me to use. For instance, "Immobilization of aminoglycosidic aminocyclitois..." well, that's
enough. I don't understand that and I'll choose a different article. I'm going to take a look
at the first result. Never just take the first result without thinking about it! Here, we've
looked at our results and made an informed choice. Also, when you click on a database
article, you get another good decision-making tool, which is the abstract. Looking at the
abstract, it does seem focused on my topic. It's a literature review, which means it looks
at many earlier scientific studies, so I really like it. I click on the PDF to open the article
and it's a nice PDF I can print and use. It's 12 pages so it's definitely over 700 words.
I'm going to use this for my paper. I need the information in the actual article for
my research paper and for the annotation in my LR10 project, but a lot of the information
I need for the annotated bibliography and the MLA citation are in the detailed record
so let's click back on that.
Notice that you can save the file or email it to yourself. You can also sign up for a
free EBSCOhost account to you can put searches and articles in a folder and get access to them wherever you are, as
long as you have an internet connection.
Let's go back to the worksheet and scroll down to the first periodical article.
OK, the requirements for a periodical article: 700 words... it's 11 pages, so that's good.
College-level; it isn't for kids, or a popular magazine like People. The article is written
by qualified people and is published in a peer-reviewed journal, with a list of references,
so it's credible. I have the full text. It's not one of the forbidden article types and
it has a lot of information on my topic. OK, all clear.
Now we go back to the article record and pull the information. I've already done it here
so you don't have to watch me type. The authors are under "Authors." The publication information
is under "Source." Here, the journal title is Clinical Infectious Diseases. Now, I need
to find the home page of the publication. I google the tile; it comes up. It looks like
it's a journal and is published on behalf of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Just to make sure it's peer-reviewed, I look at the Instructions to Authors, then Journal
Policies, the Peer Review Process. Magazines and newspapers won't have all this but they
should have an "About Us" or similar page.
The exact database is Academic Search Complete. If you're searching multiple database, scroll
down; the record should tell you the exact database. Proquest and EBSCOhost are not databases,
they're database companies. You'll need the name of the exact database for your MLA citation.
Word count: if there isn't a word count in the record, select the whole article (you
can use control-a), copy it and paste it in Word, and you'll see the word count. If it's
a PDF, it will look weird. Don't worry, just get the word count. If it's over five pages,
you can give me the page count.
Now, I need a screenshot of the first page. I'm skipping the more detailed section here.
The detailed record is fine, or I can use the PDF. I have a Mac so I have to hit command-shift-4,
then the spacebar, and my screenshot will be saved to the desktop. If you have a PC,
hit PrintScreen, then paste the screenshot in Word; it should be on your clipboard. If
you have trouble, Google your operating system and "screenshot."
I had to insert the file in the evidence part of the worksheet; if you have Word, just paste
it. Now, Knightcite. You can google "KnightCite"; it will usually be the first result. Most
of the information you need for your citation will be in the worksheet already.
This is KnightCite. We go down the side and choose the type of thing we're citing. I'm
citing a journal article so I click on that. I'm going to copy and paste information I
already typed in the worksheet. Again, so you don't have to watch me type, I've started.
I have my three authors, the article title and the journal title. Since this is a supplement,
the volume, issue and date are a little different from most journals. It's Volume 45. I don't
see an issue. Since I do see a full date, I'll put that in; it's unusual with journals,
they often just have the year. The page numbers start with an S, so I include that. I click
ONline, since it isn't a printed journal I can hold in my hand. I used a database. EBSCOhost
has the exact database name at the bottom of the detailed record. I'm NOT going to include
the URL since this is a database article. I would include the URL for a website. Now
I jhit "submit" and, ta dah! I have a nice citation I can copy and paste in my worksheet.
I really recommend making a free account in Knightcite so you can save all your citations
in an alphabetized list. You can make different projects for different classes. If you see
a mistake, like I have an extra S here, you can edit the citaiton and you'll go back to
the form.
So I've copied and pasted my citation. By the way, when I copied and pasted this citation,
it didn't keep the formatting, so I would need to fix that and make sure that it was
double-spaced and had the hanging indent.
Thanks for watching! The end.