Research Skills for the Honours Project

Library Workshop for History Students

Chris ChanInformation Services Librarianhttp://about.me/chancp

30 April 2013

Learning Outcomes

• Recognize the types and range of scholarly sources you will be expected to use in the Honours Project

• Use discipline-specific databases to search for information on your Honours Project topic

• Choose an appropriate method to access the full text of articles that you find

How you will learn today

• Mini-lectures

• In-class quick polls

• Live demonstrations

• In-class exercise

Get set up for the quick polls!

Go to this URL:

http://pollev.com/hkbulib

1. Information Sources for the Honours Project

Quick Poll #1• Pretend that you are an Honours Project supervisor

• You have three students - on your handout you can see the bibliographies of their Honours Projects

• Which student has produced the best bibliography?

• Spend 2 minutes discussing with the person sitting next to you and then respond to the poll:

http://pollev.com/hkbulib

What makes a good bibliography?

• Your bibliography reveals the quality, reliability, validity, and authority of the sources you have consulted

• Books, scholarly journal articles, dissertations, and primary sources should make up the bulk of your bibligraphy

• Websites can be useful, but make sure the source is authoritative. Not sure? Ask a librarian!

• The easiest way to locate and obtain scholarly sources is to use the tools and services on the Library website

Library Honours Project Database• The Library maintains a database of past Honours

Projects that have scored high marks - the link is on the Library homepage and on your handout

• Apart from the bibliography, you can look at examples of how to organise your project

Finding Scholarly Sources: Disciplinary Databases

Quick Poll #2

When you need to do a piece of academic writing (essay, project, etc.) what is the first information search tool that you will use?

http://pollev.com/hkbulib

Why Use Databases?• General search engines are great for getting started on a topic

• However, for in-depth scholarly research like the Honours Project, disciplinary databases are important

• Example: Historical Abstracts

Focused Search

Broad search of the scholarly literature - science, education,

philosophy, etc.

Includes 2,300 academic historical journals,

covering world history from 1450 to the present

Specialized Search Limits

Databases provide special ways to limit results that are useful to the discipline.

For example, Historical Abstracts allows you to limit the results to those that cover a specified historical period

Subject thesaurus (1)

Apart from simple keyword searching, databases usually provide a thesaurus of subject terms. This allows for much

more precise searching

Subject thesaurus (2)

By matching the human-provided subject terms, relevant articles can be more easily discovered

Citation information

It is vital that you note down all of the citation information for articles that you use in your Honours Project...

Article title

Journal title

Author Publication info

Automatic Citation Generator

Databases help by providing automatic citation generators

You still need to double-check the result!

China Academic JournalsFor Chinese-language articles, China Academic

Journals is a key source:

History Databases Guide

Depending on your topic, there are many other databases that may be of use to you. The Library maintains a guide on its

website (link information is in your handout)

Quick Poll #3

We have looked at a lot of the features that databases offer. In your opinion, what is the most important reason for using databases instead of Google when doing Honours Project research?

Provide your answer in a couple of sentences:

http://pollev.com/hkbulib

Historical Abstracts Live Demo

Obtaining Full Text

No PDF?!Sometimes you will find results where there is no

full text available from the database:

Click this button:Citation (no full text)

Check for direct link to Library e-

subscription

Check Library Catalogue for access to electronic/print version

Yes

FULL TEXT!

Interlibrary Loan (ILL)

YesYes

NoNo

Interlibrary Loan (ILL)

• Obtain journal articles from libraries all over the world

• Quota of 50 free articles for Honours Project students (and only HK$5 for each article over the quota)

• Article PDFs are delivered online within 3-4 working days

• More info: http://library.hkbu.edu.hk/about/ill.html

Obtaining Full Text Live Demo

Finding Full Text: Exercise

Look up the following article:

Xiaohua, Dai. "Hong Kong: Good beginning for the `one country, two systems.'" Beijing Review 41, no. 27 (July 6, 1998): 8-12. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed April 29, 2013).

How would you obtain the full text of this article? Make your choice in the online poll:

http://pollev.com/hkbulib

Listen and follow the librarian’s instructions to access the database named Academic Search Premier

Honours Project Research Consultations

• This workshop has given a brief overview of the major skills and tools you will need to be successful in your Honours Project research

• For more help, you can request a one-on-one consultation with a professional librarian

• Sign up on the Library website - the link is also in your handout

Summary

• You are expected to consult a range of different scholarly source types when completing your Honours Project

• Use disciplinary databases to make finding and citing scholarly sources easier

• The Library can get full text for you in most cases - remember ILL!

• Need help with searching, citing, organising, or anything else? Ask a librarian!

Thanks!