Kickstart 2010On-line Research

Research

Assignments at tertiary level require specialist knowledge which can only be gained by research.

You are expected to show that you have read and comprehended the literature on a topic.

Although it is good to start with general sources to get your head around the topic, higher marks will be gained by careful selection and discussion of the literature.

You cannot read everything. It is a good idea to ask the lecturer which texts or articles

on the reading list are best for a certain topic.

IT skills

In order to surf the internet to find sources for your academic assignments you need some basic skills:

TypingComputer operationSoftware commands. It is also important to show common sense, avoid

looking through rubbish in the hope of finding something valuable.

And have courage, not much can really go wrong.

BenefitsAlthough most subjects will have a primary text, it is

always useful to look for supplementary material and alternative points of view.

Many online sites will provide an abstract of the article, which will give you a quick summary of the paper and its major argument or point.

Reading abstracts provides a quick and fairly thorough grounding on a topic and then you can choose which articles are worth reading in full.

And of course electronic texts are great to cut and paste out of. But remember to always provide full references and quotation marks.

Subject areas

Different academic areas have their own Journals and directories.

Usually you will be provided with a Unit Outline for each subject which lists useful Journals as well as a reading list.

This should be your first and major source of Journal articles.

Online Encyclopedias

There are many online Encyclopedias.An Encyclopedia provides general information and is

only useful as an initial source.You should not refer to or quote from an

Encyclopedia in your essays.But they are a good source of introductory

information.Wikipedia is often used as a quick source of

information. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Further links

Wikipedia has an especially useful feature, at the bottom of the page on each topic is a list of references and links to further information.

Many of these links are to sound academic sites.

GOOGLE ScholarThis is an excellent resource for searching for

academic titles. You can search by author or title. For best results place your search in quotation marks.

If you are using this on a library computer it should provide you with a full version of the article.

Off-campus you will probably only get abstracts.There is no need to buy Journal articles but it does

provide this option.The options to find Related articles, Cited articles and

Group articles are also useful.http://scholar.google.com.au/

JSTOR

Like Google Scholar, JSTOR provides abstracts of papers.

Again if you are on a campus computer you should gain access to full articles but usually not from home unless you pay for a subscription.

But why pay when your university can provide free access?

BUBL Link and ALEX

BUBL Link is a British directory of Journal articles on many subject areas.

It works much like Google Scholar and JSTOR.http://bubl.ac.uk/ALEX is an online directory of complete classic

texts.

http://www.infomotions.com/alex/

E-Books

Books that are out of copywrite can often be found on the web for free.

This is especially true of classics but beware of poor translations.

Links

I have included a word document on the Kickstart 2009 Resources CDrom titled

8c.E-Text on line.docThis document has a list of on-line directories of

articles and ebooks which you can browse for free.All the directories I have discussed today and more

are provided there with their full URLs (on-line addresses).

Forums

There are also many on-line Forums where you can ask questions on a topic and get responses from people all over the world.

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