These lessons are designed to support the research you are asked to do in your various classes. Understanding the key concepts in these lessons will enhance your learning, as well as saving you time. Each one will take you about 20 minutes, perhaps a little longer if English is not your first language.

Deepening

This lesson was created by Barbara Kobritz, Instructional Services Librarian at TC3. Comments may be emailed to kobritb@tc3.edu

In this lesson you will learn to use information sources as springboards to take you deeper into a topic by searching for

• Authors and experts;
• Organizations and agencies;
• Web sites;
• Books and articles.

Opening Up Your Research

Research is a journey. Some of the best journeys don’t have a specific destination. Sometimes we just pick a direction and set off to see the world! Once you pick your direction (an idea or topic that interests you) and get started (do some initial reading and thinking) each stage of the journey suggests new places to go, things to see, people to talk to.

EXAMPLE:
I was working with a student who was interested in the baseball steroid scandal. As we talked about the topic and did some initial searching, we found that there is not a lot of research on steroids in major league baseball. (Lots of newspaper articles, but not a lot of reliable research.) But we did start to see research on the steroid problem at the high school level. The student found this more intriguing than the original topic and suddenly, instead of studying a scandal that involves a relatively small number of people, she was looking at a serious public health problem.

Enriching Your Journey

In this lesson we’re going to learn how to enrich the research journey by reading information on a second level. We’re interested not only in what a book or article can tell us about the topic, but also how it can help us find more information on the topic.

Information doesn’t appear in a vacuum. Writers base their conclusions on other writings and research. If you track down some of the things they refer to, eventually you will start to see a pattern to the information about the topic you’re interested in.

The research journey begins because something intrigues you – something you learn in class, a story on the news, something that happens to you that you don’t understand. Depending on what the initial source is that you start from you might find quite a few ways to expand your knowledge. We’re going to learn about four of them: pursuing an author, pursuing an agency or organization, pursuing a web site and pursuing a book or article.

1. Pursuing an Author

When you find a good article or book for your topic, it’s always a good idea to see what else the author has written. Scholarly writers, in particular, often write multiple pieces on the same area of research. You may also see authors cited as experts in news or magazine articles. How can you find out who this author is and what he or she has written?

Say I want to learn more about the welfare reform legislation of the 1990s and its impact on families living on welfare. I start by searching the InfoTrac database and pull up articles such as this one:

Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Illinois) (via Knight-Ridder / Tribune Business News), Sept 30, 2003.

 

Welfare Reform Fails to End Poverty, Study Says.

 

COPYRIGHT 2003 Chicago Tribune

 

Byline: Tim Jones

 

Sep.30--Welfare reform in Wisconsin has dramatically cut public assistance roles, but efforts in Milwaukee to place welfare recipients into jobs have not succeeded in pulling people out of chronic poverty and into self-sufficiency, according to a study by the Universities of Chicago and Wisconsin being released Tuesday.

 

The study of Wisconsin Works, or W-2, said that people who enrolled in the workfare program in Milwaukee County continued to suffer from homelessness, depression and other personal and economic hardships, despite an increase in income and additional cash assistance.

 

The income of more than eight in 10 participants in W-2 also lagged far below the official federal poverty level, the study showed.

 

"We're not seeing much evidence that the services are really significantly improving the lives of these people. They're not getting worse, but they're not getting better," said Mark Courtney, director of the University of Chicago's Chapin Hall Center for Children and an author of the study.

And the article continues on from there.

This article is a secondary source. It is not original research, but rather a newspaper reporter’s description of the research. The original research was a study conducted by the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin. This kind of secondary report is very, very common in newspapers and news broadcasts.

A few paragraphs into this news report, I discover the name of one of the authors of the study, Mark Courtney. Apparently, the news reporter interviewed the authors of the study and is quoting them in his story. I want to find out more about the people who actually did the study, including this Mark Courtney. There are several ways I could go about finding more information about and by Mark Courtney. Information about him and what he has published gives me an idea of how well respected he is in his field. Information written by him may help me learn more about this topic.

I can start by staying right in the same database and looking for articles by Courtney. Back on the search screen I:

1. change my search from "Keyword" to "Author":
2. enter "Courtney, Mark"in the search box; and
3. redo the search.

Here are the citations to four of the 31 articles that came up in response to this search:

Unintended consequences of the push for accountability: The case of national child welfare performance standards. Mark E. Courtney, Barbara Needell, Fred Wulczyn. Children and Youth Services Review. December 2004. v26 i12 p1141-1154.

 

Housing problems experienced by recipients of child welfare services. (Author Abstract) Mark E. Courtney, Steven L. McMurtry, Andrew Zinn. Child Welfare. September-October 2004. v83 i5 p393(30).

 

Clinical predictors of bioterrorism-related inhalational anthrax. (Research Letters) Demetrios N. Kyriacou, Adam C. Stein, Paul R. Yarnold, D. Mark Courtney, Regina R. Nelson, Gary A. Noskin, Jonathan A. Handler, Ralph R. Frerichs. The Lancet. July 31, 2004, v364 i9432 p449 (2647 words).

 

Examination of the impact of increased court review on permanency outcomes for abused and neglected children. (Wisconsin)(Special Issue: Child Protection in the 21st Century) Mark E. Courtney, Joan Blakey. Family Court Review, October 2003. v41 i4 p471-479.

I can see from this search that Mark Courtney has, indeed, published articles on welfare in many journals (Children and Youth Services Review, Child Welfare, Family Court Review). I also learn that he uses the middle initial "E" to distinguish himself from other Mark Courtneys publishing other types of research, such as the article on anthrax that appeared in the British medical journal, The Lancet.

The first article looks particularly interesting to me. Based on the title, "Unintended consequences of the push for accountability: The case of national child welfare performance standards", it sounds as if it addresses national issues. This might be even more useful than the original study we read about, which was about Wisconsin only.

NOTE: Courtney has two co-authors on this article – Barbara Needell and Fred Wulczyn. More about them after we finish up with Courtney.

When I click on the article title, I discover that the database gives me the brief abstract (summary) but not the full text of the article. If you run into this situation with an abstract that sounds on target for you, contact a librarian. We can either get you the text of the article, or help you find other equally useful sources.

I can continue on down the list, looking at any articles by Mark E. Courtney that seem on topic. This search is a little more focused than my "welfare reform" search because I am now looking for articles on my topic by someone I know has published original research in the field. I could do the same search in other article databases, such as ProQuest and MasterFile, not just the one I started in.

I might also want to search for books by Mark E. Courtney. From the Library Gateway page I can search for books locally (the "Search Library Catalog" link) or world wide (the "WorldCat" link). It’s always a good idea to start locally and then go to WorldCat only if you need to. For this search I clicked on "Search Library Catalog" to bring up the TC3 Library Catalog search screen.

The search strategy is exactly the same as it was in the article databases:

1. change the search from "All Fields" to "Author":
2. enter "Courtney, Mark" in the search box; and
3. click on "Go" to do the search.

A Search Results pop-up window opens to tell me I did not get any matches. All that tells me about Mark Courtney and his work is that TC3 doesn’t own any books by him. A minor dead-end.

I can expand my search to libraries all over the world by returning to the Library Gateway and choosing WorldCat. Returning to the Library Gateway I choose WorldCat to go to the WorldCat search screen. There I enter the same search -- AUTHOR: Courtney, Mark.

The first page of my search result seems like a pretty mixed bag – everything from a movie version of The Adventures of Huck Finn to a 1958 book called "Religion and the State University." There are some things by Mark E. Courtney about children and welfare, but item 13 seems particularly relevant to my search: Challenges and opportunities posed by the reform era, published in 1999.

WorldCat notes that this item is available in only 3 libraries worldwide. That means it will be difficult for TC3 to get a copy. Let’s click on the title and see if it’s worth pursuing anyway.

Although WorldCat treats this item as a book, we learn from the full record that it is a 16-page paper that was presented at a conference in 1999.

This is the kind of judgment call you have to make all the time in research:

• You could ask a TC3 librarian to try to get this item through InterLibrary Loan. Even though only 3 libraries have the item we might be able to get it.
• Or, based on your research so far, you could decide there will be plenty of material out there and, since this item may be difficult to retrieve, you’ll skip this one.
• Or you could print out the record and put it in a "maybe" folder to pursue later depending on what else you find.
• And, of course, you would continue looking through your WorldCat results. You may find some interesting books by Courtney there as well.

However you decide to proceed, you now know that Mark E. Courtney has published quite a few articles, as well as presenting at conferences, indicating that he has some standing among experts in this field. This type of searching not only helps you find more information. It helps you evaluate the reputation of an author.

P.S. Remember Barbara Needell and Fred Wulczyn, Mark Courtney’s co-authors on the first article in InfoTrac? I used the same techniques on both of them – looking for articles and books by them in article databases and WorldCat – and here’s what I found out:

• Barbara Needell's publications are primarily about measuring the effectiveness of programs.
• Fred Wulczyn is primarily interested in foster care.

If I were doing this project I would consider both of those dead-ends. I would want to stick with the impact on poor families of the welfare reform act of 1994. You might decide differently and one of these authors might take you down a whole new intriguing path. These are two kinds of paths you will encounter over and over on the research journey:

• frustrating dead-ends; and
• intriguing forks in the road.

2. Pursuing Agencies and Organizations

There are at least two ways that you might pursue government agencies and private organizations:

1. Find articles and books they have published.
2. Find their web site and see if they have relevant reports or data available there for downloading.

For example, a very brief article, just 4 sentences long, came up in my InfoTrac search. It reports on some research that was done by the Manhattan Institute Center for Civic Innovation. Here are the first two sentences:

"Welfare reform could be responsible for up to half the drop in child poverty among African-American and Hispanic households headed by single mothers, a new study reports. Those groups had the highest rates of both welfare participation and child poverty before the welfare system was overhauled in 1996, according to the report from the Manhattan Institute Center for Civic Innovation."

Their data sounds intriguing but if I want to quote it, I need to find the original study. To find the Manhattan Institute I would go to a good search engine, obviously, and search for their name. (By the way, putting quotation marks around "Manhattan Institute" forces the search engine to find that particular phrase, not just pages that happen to include the word Manhattan and the word Institute. Very handy.)

I got 153,000 hits with the phrase "Manhattan Institute," but good old Google brought the home page of the Institute right up to the top of the list. The second item on the list, the Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan Institute, is indented because it is part of the larger site listed just above it. If I remember correctly, the "Center for Civic Innovation" is the program at the Manhattan Institute that released this study, so I am going to start with that link and see what I find.

At the home page of the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Civic Innovation, I notice the list of "Recent CCI Publications" in the menu at the left. Scrolling down the list, I see that the third report is called, "Child Poverty and Welfare Reform: Stay the Course." (The way they have their page organized it actually took me a minute or two to find this. Sometimes it takes a little persistence.) I click on the title and find the report mentioned in our original article, Civic Report Number 44 published in December 2004, written by June O’Neill and Sanders Korenman. Remember the original article in InfoTrac was just a little news item that said this study had been released, not something I could cite in a paper. Now I have the report itself in my hands.

Since we’ve already learned about pursuing an author, we know how to start finding out who June O’Neill and Sanders Korenman are!

In addition to looking at an organization’s web site, you can look for its publications in libraries. For example, here are a few sentences excerpted from an article that came up in a search in the MasterFile database:

"Those who tout the success of welfare reform…presume that the women who have been terminated are now working. Many are, but almost as many aren’t. Studies in nine states compiled by the National Governors’ Association and other organizations concluded that 40 to 50 percent of the families who left welfare did not have a job… Extreme childhood poverty is increasing nationwide. Mayors and poverty advocates report a surge of demand at food pantries as well as homelessness."

You can tell in a few seconds that this author has a different perspective on the issue than the Manhattan Institute! In this article we find references to studies by the National Governors Association, the Children’s Defense Fund and the Coalition for the Homeless. Let’s take a closer look at the Children’s Defense Fund.

Starting once again at the Library Gateway, I'll choose WorldCat. I could start with the TC3 Library Catalog, but experience tells me that TC3 will not have a wide selection of reports published by organizations. We’ll have some, but not a lot. So I am going to skip right into WorldCat.

At the WorldCat search screen I do an Author search on "Children’s Defense Fund." (I could also use "publisher" instead of "author" and I would get a slightly different result.) I also limit the search to Books and rank the results by Date, meaning I want to see the newest publications first.

There are 371 books in the WorldCat database written by the Children’s Defense Fund. Here are a few examples of the results of this search.

1. Welfare to what: early findings on family hardship and well-being.
2. Children in the states: 1998 data book.
3. Poverty matters: the cost of child poverty in America
4. Wasting America’s future: the Children’s Defense Fund report on the costs of child poverty
5. Vanishing Dreams: the growing economic plight of America’s young families
6. Families struggling to make it in the workforce: a post welfare report

By the way, notice that WorldCat will let you know when TC3 has the publication. You can look for it in the TC3 book catalog, or ask a librarian for help.

Having run across the Children’s Defense Fund in that article in MasterFile might inspire me to narrow the focus of my project to the impact of welfare reform on children only. Or maybe not. This is one of those interesting forks in the road where the researcher gets to decide.

PS: In the preceding examples I used the web to look for the Manhattan Institute, and WorldCat to look for the Children’s Defense Fund. I went to WorldCat because I wanted you to see that organizations and foundations do publish books and reports, and you can find them in libraries. Speaking practically, though, if I were after an organization I would almost always start with their web site. In fact, if you visit the Children’s Defense Fund web site, you will find a wealth of publications there.

One possible exception to this general rule would be older material. If an organization published a report before 1995, when the web started to take off, the chances are good that they would not bother to convert it to a digital file for the web. Yet it might be perfect for your project, especially if you are looking at a particular historical period. If you know that something like that exists and it’s not at their site, try WorldCat. If you still can’t find it and you want it badly, you might go so far as to call or e-mail the organization and ask if they have any print copies left.

3. Pursuing a Web Site

Of course, this is by far the easiest way to track down information. An author mentions a web site. You go to the Internet and type in the URL (or address) for the site, and there you are.

But things can go wrong. Nothing is more irritating in the research process than thinking that you have finally located the perfect document – only to click on the link and be greeted with this message: "The page cannot be found." This is a 404 error message, indicating that either you have a typo in your URL or the page has moved. There was a time when all 404 error messages looked the same. But now webmasters often create their own. They can be quite colorful, sometimes making you think at first glance that you got the page you wanted.

There is a wonderful web site that will help you resolve 404 error problems. Since I can’t say it any better I will refer you directly to the site. This link will open in a separate window. When you’re done with it, close the window to continue with this lesson. For those of you who are planning to become web programmers, this will be baby stuff. Others might want to print this guide out and keep it handy. I have been using the web since 1994 and I learned a few new tricks from these experts!

http://www.404lab.com/404/yikes.asp

PS: Things come and go on the web. That’s one of its weaknesses. Sometimes that perfect source just won’t be retrievable. A librarian may be able to help you find a good print source you can use instead.

4. Pursuing a Book or an Article

Finding a specific book or article is what librarians call a known-item search. This is a very easy search to do once you know how. The only trick is that your citation must be correct. A small mistake, for example in the author’s name, can lead to great frustration.

Let’s return to our original search, "welfare reform," as an example. Say I have done an article search in InfoTrac on welfare reform. One of the articles I turn up is a brief book review. How do I know this is a book review? Sometimes the database notes in parentheses right after the title that it is a book review. Another telltale sign is a bibliographic description (where and when the book was published, how many pages, price, etc.) at the beginning of the article. The periodical that publishes the review may use the title of the book as the title of the review – or not. In this case, they did. (Note that Sharon Hays is the author of the book. Suzanne W. Wood wrote the review. It can be confusing.)

Here is the beginning of the book review:

Library Journal, March 15, 2003 v128 i5 p104(1)

 

Hays, Sharon. Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform. (Book Review)(Brief Article) Suzanne W. Wood.

 

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2003 Reed Business Information

 

Oxford Univ. 2003. 279 pages. permanent paper. index. LC 2002009841. ISBN 0-19-513-288-2. $28. SOC SCI

 

This very readable, important, and stimulating work deals with the consequences of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. To determine the act's impact, Hays (sociology & women's studies, Univ. of Virginia) spent three years interviewing case workers and welfare clients (overwhelmingly single women with children) in "Sunbelt City," a metropolitan area in the West, and "Arbordale," a medium-sized Southeastern town. Hays delves into the lives, thoughts, and hopes of these women, who are strongly committed to their family's well-being and seek both functional and financial independence.

Generally speaking you don’t want to use book reviews as sources for your papers. But you might want to get the book itself. If so, return to the Library Gateway and click on Search Library Catalog.

When you see this Basic Search screen, click on the Advanced Search button for expanded search options. I like Advanced Search features for known-item searches because they give me multiple search boxes, allowing me to look for both the title and the author in one combined search. Being specific reduces the number of results I have to look through to find what I’m after.

On the Advanced Search screen, we have the option to enter up to three search terms.

On the first line I’m going to change the field to "Author" and put in the author’s last name, "Hays". Remember Mark Courtney? To refine the search further I will go to the second line of the search screen, change "All Fields" to "Title" and add the work "broke" in the search box. This search will show me all the books written by someone named "Hays" with the word "broke" in the title. That should be a pretty short list! As a matter of fact, there is just one book in our library catalog that fits those criteria – exactly the one we’re looking for.

The catalog displays the record for that one book. To make my search complete I can click where it says "Click for item Availability" to see if the book is here or if someone has it checked out.

When I "Click for item Availability" a new window opens. What I am looking for is the Due date. If there is no due date, as is the case here, the book is available in the library. The record also shows you the Call Number of the book. You can use the Call Number to find a book yourself or, if you’re not familiar with the Call Number system, ask a librarian for help.

Suppose I had conducted this search and found that TC3 does not own the book I want. I could then go back to WorldCat and do a known-item search there for the Hays book and request it from another library through Inter-Library Loan (ILL). If you don’t know how to use ILL a librarian can help you.

PS: A few things to keep in mind about known-item searches:

• You have to match up what you’re trying to find with the tool you’re using. If you’re looking for a book use a book catalog (TC3’s or WorldCat). But if you’re looking for an article, use an article database (InfoTrac, ProQuest, MasterFile, Wilson, etc.).
• If an article you want isn’t in one database it may be in another. Finding articles can be quite complex. You may save yourself a lot of time by letting a librarian help you. We know the shortcuts!
• Before you invest time looking for an item, be sure that you need that specific item. Often students request books through Inter-Library Loan when they could have gotten something equally useful right here at TC3 without waiting for several days. A librarian can help you make sure you’ve gotten all you can out of the TC3 collection.

Summary

If you let your research become a process of doing the same old searches in the same old databases and picking out articles pretty much at random - it is bound to be boring.

If you dig into your sources and start to get into a vein of information on an important question, things could get interesting – maybe even exciting.

The TC3 librarians are always happy to help you.

Here’s where to find us:

1. Come see us at the library: Current hours are posted on the Library Gateway.
2. By Phone: 607.844.8222, Extension 4363
3. By Email: library@tc3.edu
4. On the Web: www.tc3.edu/library. On every page on our site, there's a link to Ask-A-Librarian. Post your question. We'll respond within one business day.

Copyright 2005 Tompkins Cortland Community College

Last update: Monday, February 11, 2008