The Research Experience. Ann Sloan Devlin

      Figure 2.4 Sources: Academia and Media

      Wall Street Journal.

      The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is an excellent source of ideas, especially for technology in the workplace, career strategies, or employment trends. The WSJ has columns and blogs devoted to many of these topics. The digital version is useful in that the dropdown menus (e.g., for Business) list all the industries covered. Technology is a particular strength of the publication.

      Chronicle of Higher Education.

      If your interest is education, the Chronicle of Higher Education is a comprehensive place to start. Articles in the Chronicle may focus on curricular issues in higher education (e.g., student evaluation of instruction or core requirements), personnel issues (e.g., Title IX and sexual harassment, including romantic relationships between professors and students), or student culture (e.g., the Greek system or the role of athletics). The publication has a free daily online newsletter; premium content requires a subscription (potentially available through your institution). This publication has sections on a range of topics, including “Technology” and “Campus Spaces.” For example, a recent article in the section on Technology talked about virtual reality in the classroom and its challenges (McMurtrie, 2019) and one on campus spaces talked about steps that have been taken to make such spaces more accessible (Biemiller, 2019).

      Television.

      Regarding television, Nielsen ratings of viewers’ habits are a good source of ideas (http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/solutions/measurement/television.html). Nielsen measures far more than television viewing; it also assesses music, retail, and food sales (e.g., top-selling brands for a particular week), which are accessible to some degree through its “top 10s” ratings (https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/top10s.html).

      Revisit and Respond 2.1

      Ideas: Information Services, aka the Library

      When recently speaking to a librarian about student use of the resources in the library, her perspective was that students often want to use the sources that are expedient (e.g., full text) and exhibit occasional impatience in cases where resources must be ordered. In addition, she stated that students often don’t know what to do with an article once they obtain it—that is, they don’t know what is worth spending time on. Another issue she raised was students’ lack of awareness of what could be found in a book chapter versus a journal article. She stated that students don’t seem to understand the “container” in which the information is delivered (i.e., book chapter, journal article, open access online article); for them, she said, “Everything is an article!” In her view, students are not able to distinguish the source from its potential value. In this chapter, I will try to provide you with the tools to change her mind about students!

      For library users, materials can be accessed in a variety of ways, which this chapter will cover. Libraries own a collection of current and bound journals, books, newspapers, magazines, visual media, and government documents available to you. What they don’t own can be accessed through electronic databases or loans from the collections of other institutions.

      Ideas: Searching Effectively in the Library

      To search for materials effectively, it is helpful to know how collections in the library are organized. Some aspects of libraries are essentially the same across institutions, independent of size. Libraries in the United States use the Library of Congress Classification System for the call numbers of books. To get a better idea of what topics are covered under which letter classifications of the Library of Congress classification outline, try http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/. Then you can click on the hyperlinked letter (e.g., B), which will take you to the subclass (B, BC, BD … BX). If you want, you can then examine a subclass in more detail. As an example, B is linked to Philosophy, Psychology, and Religion.

      Library Holdings

      A useful starting strategy is to look at your library’s holdings through its electronic catalogue. You will need to use some search terms or keywords you have thought of or identified (e.g., by looking at the relevant thesaurus in your discipline, such as the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms [11th ed., revised] for psychology). As an example, a recent search looking up the keyword “personal space” for materials (books and media) limited to my institution, yielded 1,099 entries covering a wide range of topics, from art to medicine, which are in some way related to the topic of personal space. Expanding the search to include online sources of materials available on that topic, the number of listings for personal space jumps to 1,876,667! What this example dramatically shows is that the vast majority of resources available to researchers are accessible online. Nevertheless, it is useful to understand what is available through other avenues.

      Keywords: Search terms for information retrieval.

      Reference Section: Encyclopedias and Handbooks

      The reference section has many useful handbooks and encyclopedias to obtain and refine ideas. Because each institution will be different, this next section will provide examples using psychology as the discipline rather than a comprehensive listing.

      Psychology and Other Social Sciences

      The Psychology section under the Library of Congress heading “BF” has a variety of reference materials related to psychology, including encyclopedias of psychology and handbooks that include specialized topics (e.g., alternative reality). You will also find dictionaries or handbooks on fundamental topics such as emotion, stress, intelligence, and health. A small sample of the reference volumes you might typically find under the heading “BF” is as follows:

      Encyclopedia of Psychology, Volumes 1–8 (Kazdin, 2000)

      Encyclopedia of Perception, Volumes 1–2 (Goldstein, 2010)

      Encyclopedia of Human Intelligence, Volumes 1–2 (Sternberg, 1994)

      APA Dictionary of Psychology (2nd ed.) (VandenBos, 2015)

      The Dictionary of Psychology (Corsini, 2002)

      Handbook of Child Psychology (4 vol., 6th ed.) (Damon & Lerner, 2006)

      The Reference section is also a good place to find sourcebooks of research measures and test critiques, a topic covered in more detail in Chapter 5:

      Measures