research survival guide: mastering your dissertation or project
DESCRIPTION
Working on a longer piece of research can be daunting, and you need to find and evaluate the literature around the subject. This session will provide you with tools to do a comprehensive literature search, to assess the material to identify the most useful and appropriate items, and some tools to help with compiling a bibliography.TRANSCRIPT
Research Survival Guide:
Mastering your
Dissertation or Project
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Liz OsmanCollege Librarian
Annie GleesonSenior Library Assistant
In this session…
• Finding material• Evaluating print and online sources• Referencing • Tools to make referencing easier
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Ask us to buy books!
Useful…
…but watch out!
Museums, archives & rare books
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The literature search
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A detailed and organised, step by step search for all the material available on a topic
What is a literature search?
How do I know what to search for?
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Synonyms Variant spellings
Concept ConceptConcept
Research topic
Research question
Adolescent? Young people
Youth?Teen?
Television Eating habitsAdvertising
Teenagers
Does television advertising have any influence on the eating habits of teenagers?
Impact of advertising
Are you getting too many results?
…or too few?
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Evaluating sources
Books
Why was the book written?Who published the book?When was it published?
Is the book well organised?Has the book got a bibliography?
Who is the target audience?
Journal articles
Databases
Newspapers - Be aware of bias
How trustworthy or accurate are the results?
Websites
Why was the site written?Who wrote the content?
When was it last updated?Who is the target audience?
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Why is referencing important?
Michael Stothard ‘1 in 2 admits to Plagiarism’, Varsity (October 2008)
49%of Cambridge studentshave plagiarised during their time at University
13%did not know that failing to cite sources could be considered plagiarism
Michael Stothard ‘1 in 2 admits to Plagiarism’, Varsity (October 2008)
Why is referencing important?
GIVE credit – for the work that you are building
on
GET credit – for the work that
you have done yourself
How do I do it?
Referencing means…
…in-text references
You need to include a citation every time you use another author’s work in your essay. To do this, you will either put the reference in brackets (Smith 2014, p. 123) or you will use footnotes/endnotes.1
1 Smith, J. Reference Like a Boss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) p. 123
Referencing means…
…a bibliography
Copyright Licensing Agency. “Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) : Licences for Education,” 2012. http://www.cla.co.uk/Licencesforeducation.Curley, Duncan. Intellectual Property Licences and Technology Transfer: A Practical Guide to the New European Licensing Regime. Intellectual Property Series. Oxford: Chandos, 2004.Pedley, Paul. Digital Copyright. 2nd ed. London: Facet Publishing, 2007.Secker, Jane. Copyright and E-Learning : A Guide for Practitioners. London: Facet, 2010.
When should I start to think
about referencing?
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RIGHT
NOW!
For books… author/editor, full title, page numbers, publisher, date and location of publication, edition
For articles… author, article title, page numbers journal title, date, volume/issue/number of the journal
For websites… author, date of publication, website title, full web address, date accessed
What information do I need?
How do I keep track?
• Desktop application – Windows/Mac/Linux• ‘Cite while you write’ plug-ins for the most
popular word-processing programmes• Ability to create groups to share references,
PDFs, comments etc. with peers• Back-up and synchronisation across
different devices
Both have…
• Zotero is alternatively available in an online only version as a Firefox extension
• Mendeley has an official iPad/iPhone app, with 3rd party apps available for Android. No official Zotero apps, but 3rd party available for both Android and iOS.
• PDF annotation feature in Mendeley.
But…
A detailed comparison of several reference managers:
http://library.wisc.edu/citation-managers/comparison.html
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in action
For more information…
Pop in and see us in the Library, or email [email protected]
The UL runs further research skills courses: http://training.cam.ac.uk/cul
This session was adapted from some of Emma Coonan’s presentations at:
http://researchcentral.wordpress.com/