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COLQ-4013-01 Honors Thesis Boot Camp

This guide is intended to demystify The Library and to point students in Dr. Chaffee's Spring 2021 Honors Thesis Boot Camp to the many resources, tools, and services available that will aid and support their research.

Searching for research materials is never a once and done. Your information need will often determine which search tools you need and, as your understanding of your topic grows and shifts, you will likely need to run more searches to find new resources for your topic.

By understanding your information need, you can begin to get a sense of what tool to use and what type of resource you're looking for. We can provide broad strokes recommendations but getting to know where to look for your different information needs is in many ways a discipline-specific learned skill. These are the questions you can begin asking yourself to start finding way-posts along your path:

  • Are you looking for books? articles? original documents? newspapers? photographs? film? music?
  • Is your information need broad or highly targeted in nature?
  • Do you need a general, surface level over view of a subject or are you looking to get into the weeds of a topic?

Search Tools

Self-directed exercise # 1

Search Library Search and then WorldCat using identical search parameters.

  • Did you find research material available through Tulane Libraries in one search interface but not the other?
  • Based on this experience, what importance does the way in which information resources are described have and what are the possible implications for the research process?
  • Will this experience alter your approach or methodology for searching for information?

More Questions to Ponder

Libraries and archives are direct expressions of presiding social constructs and power systems and wittingly or no participate in systems of oppression. We likely won't have time to discuss in class but here are some questions that you should have in mind as you engage in your research practices:

  • How might socio-cultural norms be reflected what materials are collected and made available in academic libraries and archives?
  • If there are absent histories and voices within the research materials available to me, what does that mean for my own scholarly inquiry?
  • How can i create space and time within my own research for commonly marginalized histories and voices?

Keep in mind, many librarians and archivists have been working in one way or another to bring balance to the histories, cultures, and voices in our collections, and yet much work remains to be done.

#LibrariesAreNotNeutral

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