ENC 1101
English Composition I
Investigative Research Project
Slavery in the Modern World
Slavery in the Modern World
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Joan Monahan ENC 1101 English Composition I |
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Slavery in the Modern World |
This is an investigative research
project.
You and your group will be researching and writing an informative
paper on the topic of slavery.
Each group will focus their project
on a particular country:
Sudan, Thailand, India, Brazil, Mauritania, Pakistan, or the U.S.
Your project should include:
You know your assignment, now you need a research strategy.
What information do you need?
It is often helpful to start your research with some basic background information to get you up to speed on your topic. The easiest place to start is with a general encyclopedia. PCC has several print encyclopedias in the Reference collection - You can find them by searching the LINCC catalog or feel free to ask the librarian for assistance. You can access the electronic version of the Encyclopedia Britannica at http://www.britannica.com .
While you may not be able to use a general encyclopedia as an official reference source for your paper (most instructors don't like that), you can use a general encyclopedia to give you back ground information on your topic, give you ideas for search terms and subject headings and even to give you hints about how to lay out your paper.
Take a look at the "How To" guide: "How to take advantage of Encyclopedias"
Now that you have completed your "background check" you should have a better idea about what kinds of information you are going to need to produce this project. Will you need statistics, biographies, historical data, economic developments, religious beliefs, governmental policies...? The next question is: Where and how will you get this information? Will you use books, magazine/journal articles, newspaper articles, websites, interviews, videos...?
The next sections of this guide will give you ideas for finding information on your topic in these various kinds of resources.
You've looked at a general encyclopedia in the reference collection, now take a look at some of the specialized reference resources.
You can find these kinds of resources by searching the LINCC catalog using some of those clever search terms and subject headings you found during the "background check" of your topic.
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Articles are organized alphabetically. Entries are authored and include a bibliography. Includes an index for easy location of information. |
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Since 1945 Includes alphabetically organized articles with index as well as The International Bill of Human Rights and Human Rights time line. |
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Researcher |
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Compare data about human rights, literacy, malnutrition, imports... for the world. |
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Provides basic information about each country: key historical events, population, government, international relations, economy, industry. |
Again, you'll use LINCC to find books (as well as videos, cd's, music scores, websites.... By the way, have you used the LINCC catalog lately? It changed a bit this year. If you haven't used it this term take a minute to play with the special features. You can search using the expanded search or subject browse features, and remember, you can search for books at the Winter Haven, Lakeland and any Florida Community College (and other library materials as well) on your home computer, in the TLCCs or any where you find Internet access.
Try the "Expanded Search" for more specific searching. When you search the LINCC catalog for books on slavery you are sure to get many books on the civil war and slavery in the United States during that period. A simple subject search of "slavery" yields 196 records. If you use the expanded search and add the term NOT United States the program will throw out all the books that have "United States" as a descriptor and you receive 85 records instead of 196.
The "Subject Browse" is a helpful feature when you have a very broad topic. The subject browse feature shows you the subject headings and subheadings of a topic. At the end of each heading is a link to the titles held at PCC that come under that subheading.
Take a closer look at the LINCCSearch catalog record for books you find valuable. The catalog record will list the subject descriptors used by the cataloger to describe this book. You can use them to find similar books - the descriptors are even hypertext so you can link directly to books under that heading.
Finding
Articles
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To find articles in newspapers, magazines, and journals you can use a print index tool or an electronic indexing tool (a database). I suppose you could try your luck and just browse the shelves and hope a great and relevant article falls on your head, but that would take a very long time and I'm sure you have better things to do.
The print indexes are simple to use
(you can even read the
page or two of instructions at the beginning of the indexes if
your really want a clue)
1. Pick the year you want to search
2. Look for your topic in the alphabetically arranged index
(These indexes are also great
resources for finding additional search terms and subject headings.)
3. Copy down the complete citation information
Sometimes you get redirected because what you may call "guns" they may call "fire arms" but basically it works out. The most important thing to remember about using the print indexes is to write down all the information completely (or make a copy if you like).
Another nice thing about the print indexes is they go back many years; the electronic resources are working on that, but generally they go back 5 or 10 years tops. If you have found some recent articles using the print indexes you may be able to find them and print them out for free - by using on of PCC's electronic resources.
The PCC Libraries have many electronic resources (databases) that will let you search for newspaper, magazine, and journal articles on just about any subject. You can also search by author, date or source of publication. They all work in a similar fashion, like the LINCCSearch online catalog which is just another database - it's just that it is for books, not articles. In any online database there is usually a box where you type in what-ever it is that you are looking for (you can adjust the dates or sources if you like) and then you click on search and the clever thing gives you a list of compatible results - it's kind of like computer dating only the computer is matching you to an article not your future spouse.
Types of Electronic Resources / Databases
There are databases
to help you find:
- Images
- Statistics
- Newspaper articles
- Literary Criticisms
- Websites
- General magazine and journal articles
- Subject specific articles on education, art, or science...
Databases for articles may provide a simple citation, an abstract, or the full text or full image of an article - read the description so that you know what to expect?
EBSCOhost's Academic Search Elite offers full-text articles for over 1,250 journals dating back to 1990, and abstracts and indexing for nearly 2,880 scholarly journals dating back to 1984. Many of the journals are peer-reviewed. Academic Search Elite provides journal coverage for most academic areas of study, including biological sciences, economics, communications, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts and literature, medical sciences and women's studies.
