English 105 : Expository Writing
Topic: Hamlet
11/29/07
Prof. Bill Oliver
20 students
Merrill
Research Guide: http://library.wlu.edu/services/eng105winter05.asp
Note: the linking feature in Movable Type is not working.
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Topic: Hamlet
11/29/07
Prof. Bill Oliver
20 students
Merrill
Research Guide: http://library.wlu.edu/services/eng105winter05.asp
Note: the linking feature in Movable Type is not working.
Research session for the Ignorance Club
11/19/07
9 attendees
Merrill
No research guide.
The members of the Ignorance Club (mostly "townies") do extensive research in preparation for their papers and presentations. These people were confused about how to use Annie, indexes, our services, research strategies, and what is accessible from home versus what they need to come to the library for. I made it clear that they can only use the 2 public computers. This was a valuable "community service", and now they know that it's perfectly fine to use the reference librarians for help.
A student in the Journalism 101 course (Media and Society) is trying to write a research paper on the effects that movies that focus on teenage women (and which are targeted on teenage audiences) have on young women, including pre-teens. The topic probably is not as "easy" as the student thinks.
Here is a research guide, focusing on academic journals, as required by the course assignment.
I am helping a student in Frank Settle's "Nuclear Power" course with research on aspects of nuclear terror. She may yet want to narrow down her subject.
Here is the basic research guide.
A student in Ed Wasserman's Media Ownership and Control class is researching a paper on reality television. Given the course's subject matter, she hopes to be able to focus on economic issues -- the need for writers, etc.
Here is a quick research guide.
English 105: Gossips and Cons (2 sessions)
"Expository Writing"
11/13/07
Prof. Wall
18+17=35 students
Research Guide and presentations by Y. Merrill
Projects: write a few short papers with bibliography.
The question: Do we have the British Parliamentary Papers?
This series has had more official titles than you can imagine, but we have most (all?) of the 19th century on microfilm, under the same basic call number.
Our holdings continue into the 21st century.
We dropped the s.o. for the microfilm/microfiche because the papers are now freely available on the Parliament Web site.
I am not aware that we have any indexing of the pre-Internet Papers/Debates/Hansard, although the above Annie record includes this statement: "Beginning with Ser. 3, the last vol. of each annual session is (or includes) a general index for the vols. of that session."
Another possibility for locating events and issues might be the Times (London) Index.
I have been helping an SVU student who needs to find "primary sources" (especially Federal Government materials) on efforts to lower the national voting age to 18, particularly efforts pre-dating the 1960's.
Between LexisNexis Congressional (especially the Hearings and Serial Set components) and WorldCat, we identified a handful of items, only one of which is in our print collection. The LN Hearings Digital Collection supplied one more. The rest would have to be interlibrary loan fodder. (The Law Library had none of them.)
Interestingly, WorldCat scared up one or two Congressional items which did not appear anywhere in the LexisNexis Congressional universe.
Also useful: The Public Papers of the Presidents series included Eisenhower's 1954 State of the Union speech, in which he endorses lowering the voting age.
And I guess newspaper articles also are "primary sources," so the Historical New York Times and Washington Post (especially the latter) are good.
Classics 295: Topics in Classical Civilization
11/8/07
Prof. Johnson
9 students
Merrill
No course guide. Students needed help with article research. Showed students l'Annee Philologique, A&HS, Philosophy Index, ATLA, JSTOR, Muse, Google Scholar, WebBridge and Interlibrary Loan. All of these are on the Humanities Research Guide.
English 299A: H.G. Wells
11/8/07
Prof. Adams
5 students
Project: students have already written the first draft of their paper; now they are supposed to consult more resources and use ILL.
Research Guide by Yolanda Merrill
A student in David Novack's Race and Ethnic Relations course wants to write his research paper on the cultural effects of (forced) relocation on Navajos.
It seemed that the best outline for our discussion was an adapation of the course research guide's "basic" Articles page to a new page that focused on his Navajo research. (Contribute makes this easy.)