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WRTG 105 Moral of the Story: Allegory as Form and Practice (Gilbert) : Home

Welcome!

This guide will help you get started with research for your WRTG 105 class. Feel free to contact your librarian for additional help! 

Databases

Finding ebooks

River Campus Libraries provides access to over one million e-books covering a large variety of disciplines and publishers. Because our e-books are available through different databases and websites, the easiest way to find an e-book in UR’s collection is to start on the library's homepage and choose "Library Catalog Only" from the dropdown box.

To narrow your search to e-books, choose the Available online, Books, and Book chapters filters from the options on the left-hand side of your results (Show Me)...or use the search box below.

E-books

The library also has several collections of e-books that are worth searching in for your topic. While books in these collections are pulled into all of our catalog searches, relevant titles can sometimes get buried within thousands of results. Try searching these databases directly for e-books on your topic:

Choosing the right database

Ask yourself what type of source is more likely to have the information you need and how will I use this source?:

  • News articles?
  • Scholarly journal articles?
  • Empirical studies?
  • Data and statistics?
  • Primary documents?

Deciding the most likely source will help determine which database to use. Different databases are composed of information from different types of sources.  BEAM is a method for helping you decide how you might use a source.

Ask yourself if the database you select provides full-text, or only citations and /or abstracts:

  • If the database you need to use does not have full-text, use the Find at URor Request buttons.
  • If you have a citation, use the Citation Search Tool to locate the full-text.

Understand the scope of the database you select. Ask yourself:

  • Does this database cover the subject area (discipline) I really need, or is there a better, more focused database?
  • Does this database provide indexing for the date range I need?
  • Will this database point me to or provide the full-text for articles written during the time period that is appropriate for my research need?

Although retrospective materials are sometimes added to databases, the actual article you need might not be available electronically, because it is too old or too new. 

Ask yourself if there are special advanced features that can improve your search results or make searching easier:

  • Does this database allow me to limit my search to a specific date range, or to a particular magazine or journal?
  • Does this database allow me to email, download, or export articles to my citation manager like Zotero or RefWorks?
  • Are there features that can help me to generate better search terms, like the Thesaurus feature or the "Browse Subject Headings" features in some databases?

Writing and Citing Help at UR

Evaluating Resources with TRAP

Using the TRAP Method

You can ask yourself questions about Timeliness, Relevance, Authority, and Purpose to evaluate a source of information. First, choose the source you want to evaluate. Then, go through each of the questions below.

Timeliness

  • When was it published?
  • Has it ever been updated?
  • Do I need an up-to-date source?
  • Would an older source be better this time?

Relevance

  • Does this source discuss at least part of my topic?
  • Does it allow me to build on the topic?
  • Does this provide a point I can disprove?
  • Is my topic still important within its field or study?

Authority

  • Who is the author?
  • Does the source tell me about the author?
  • Is the author qualified on this topic?
  • Where did the author get their information?

Purpose

  • Is the source peer reviewed?
  • What is the purpose (informative, persuasive, commercial, etc.)? 
  • Is the purpose stated clearly?
  • Who is the intended audience?

Brainstorming

Brainstorming - step by step

Write what you know - what you’re curious about - don’t edit yourself! Terms that you know, researchers? Any more specific areas you might focus on -

 

Pre-research: Where do you get ideas for the right kind of terms? Wikipedia, google, news, friends? Take a few minutes to look around. If you like google, fine - just remember, we’re just getting the landscape. Try to think of some source that you have some trust in with respect to your topic.

 

First pass at narrowing your topic

Who - can you narrow the group?

Where - can you narrow the place?

When - can you narrow the time frame?

How - can you limit to a particular methodology/effect?

(If your research question/topic is super-specific - you can use these to broaden it a little, too.)

 

Using Articles and Books as brainstorming tool.

www.library.rochester.edu (first tab: Articles & Books)  

What we’re not doing quite yet: looking for 10 pdfs to download and read. (We’ll get there, I promise)

  • We’re going to start by seeing what’s happening in the field *right now* - we’ll put some search terms in, and then use the filters:

Scholarly articles

Discipline

Publication date (try “Last 12 months”)

Use the “Preview” link to read the abstract, subject headings, etc.

Not finding what you want? Try changing the search terms - you might be discovering new terms as you look.

 

Finding a few “starter” articles

Your research question should be getting a little more focused now. Find one or two articles that look promising. Open them up, and we’ll take a moment to think about how these might help us find more relevant research.

  • Author, journal, keywords

  • Lit review, introduction, background

  • Conclusion: areas for future research

  • Works Cited/ Bibliography/References

Is there one article cited that you like that’s more than 2 years old? Let’s see if anyone else has cited that article: scholar.google.com

Now, you have a few articles, and you might find you need to go through parts of this again as your ideas change and develop.  Have a strategy and remember that I’m here to help with that!

 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License by Eileen Daly-Boas, University of Rochester. 

Student Success Librarian

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Laura Dumuhosky
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Land Acknowledgement

I wish to honor and express my gratitude to the Indigenous peoples who cared for the lands where the majority of this guide was developed.  I acknowledge that the lands that UR inhabit are the unceded ancestral territory of the Seneca Nation, known as the Onöndowa'ga or “Great Hill People” and “Keepers of the Western Door” of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy whose loss of lives, culture, knowledge, stories, and experiences are a part of Rochester, New York State, and U.S. history. May we all work collectively to combat the continued erasure of indigenous lands, life, and knowledge. For more information on how you can support preservation efforts visit ganondagan.org and senecamuseum.org.