Religious/Ethnic Conflict in Iraq
A student in Tyler Dickovick's Politics 105 (Global Politics) class is writing a paper on relations between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq.
Here is the research guide. (Lots of stuff to wade through.)
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A student in Tyler Dickovick's Politics 105 (Global Politics) class is writing a paper on relations between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq.
Here is the research guide. (Lots of stuff to wade through.)
3/27/08
Prof. Bill Oliver
12 students
Merrill
Students will write 3-5 pp papers on a variety of subjects, among them Hamlet.
Research Guide
A student who is in the midst of researching and writing her honors thesis for Journalism and Mass Communications asked for help on her topic, which concerns two famous instances of journalistic "sting operations" -- one in Chicago and one in India. The research involves looking at ethical issues and, if possible, the reasons why such activities are much more acceptable in India than in the U.S.
Here is the research guide.
A student in Professor Zaracol's POL 295B class (International Security) is writing a research paper on "what UN reforms should be done in order to have the UN run more efficiently. A subtopic is what political theories can be utilized to explain why each reform is necessary, or why each problem was created in the first place."
Here is the research guide I discussed with her.
This class of English majors will write papers on Arthurian romances.
3/18/08
Prod. Craun
15 students
Merrill
Two students in Dayo Abah's Law and Communications course are to write a research paper (with 15-20 citations) on this one rather narrow topic, a very particular aspect of privacy law as it relates to the mass media.
(Let's put it this way: I'm glad I don't have to write this paper.)
Here is the research guide.
I've had two questions related to the laws of foreign countries - the first about the statutes that established the Central Bank in selected countries, and the second about corporate tax rates for selected countries. One of the most helpful sites in tracking down answers to these legal questions that were not not reported in standard reference tools was the Foreign Law Guide - http://foreignlawguide.com/ip/
It helped in locating the full text of statutes and the correct governmental departments.
This is a pretty interesting challenge -- and by "challenge" I mean "frustrating" and "fruitless."
This question came from two faculty members in our Journalism Department and I eventually forwarded it to the Oberef group:
In October 2006 television station KDKA in Pittsburgh broadcast promotions for an upcoming news story which never was aired, for reasons described here.
As part of a study of media ethics, members of the Journalism and Mass Communications faculty at Washington and Lee University would like to be able to view video of the aired promo(s). It is my understanding that KDKA has declined requests to share that video.
I have checked the Internet Archive, the Vanderbilt Television Archive, YouTube, and the generic Web. Does anyone out there any some other suggestions?
A student in Harlan Beckley's Poverty Studies seminar is writing a paper on black males in high school -- issues, influences, outcomes, data, etc.
Here is a brief research guide.
Classic the-world-has-changed reference question:
Someone -- a local resident, I think -- called the Reference Desk to find out if we subscribed to any nursing journals.
There appear to be at least two ways to answer this question in the affirmative.
The person asking the question may come here this afternoon or Sunday evening.
Annie indicates we have about 24 online "periodicals" featuring the keyword "nursing," all of which are part of our Blackwell Synergy subscription (who knew?). You can search the Blackwell Synergy collection of Nursing journals by using the Advanced Search feature to limit a search by "Subject Area" to "Medicine" and then to the sub-group "Nursing." Works like a charm (except we do not have full-text access to every article, but hey... ).
Another option would be to use ProQuest Research Library and limit a search to periodicals with the word "nursing" in the their titles. (Better than Academic OneFile because of better full-text access to nursing journals.)
This is not a complex assignment, but the resource used might be a little surprising.
A student in the Poverty Studies capstone course is working with Harlan Beckley to evaluate coverage of poverty-related issues in three U.S. newspapers -- the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, the Courier-Journal in Louisville, and the Pioneer Press in St. Paul.
A year ago, I would have recommended LexisNexis Academic for this work -- before LexisNexis' re-organized and "improved" their search interface. But now the "upstart" Newsbank Access World News is much easier to use for searching most individual U.S. newspapers.
The student's initial topic proposal for her Sociology independent study was "pre-marital sex/virginity and levels of religiosity of Judaism," but we now think there is not enough specifically on that particular subject.
She may end up doing a comparative study of premarital sex/virginity among various religious groups, along with the effect of varying levels of religiosity.
This brief research guide is just a jumping-off point.
A student writes: "I will be writing a paper on the potential proliferation impact of the recent Libya-France agreement re: nuclear energy. Information on this specific agreement (signed in summer 2007, the deal includes a promise by France to sell a nuclear reactor to Libya in exchange for Libyan uranium), international regulatory regimes and treatieslike the IAEA and the NPT respectively, the proliferation risks associated with nuclear energy in general and information about Libya's political and nuclear history would all be helpful. The paper is due April 4, but the first draft is due March 24."
Here is a brief research guide I put together.
By the way, doing the above was made noticeably easier when I found an older research guide about Libya in our Reference Transactions blog.
I encourage everyone to write up reference appointments and any other somewhat involved research guidance in this blog. That work often comes in handy later on other projects -- and not just for you.