Begin at the beginning - researching your assignment

“Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?” he asked.
“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

- Lewis Carrol, Alice’s adventures in wonderland (1865), ch. 12 

Earlier in the year I wrote a blog post on Improving your essay writing skills, which is quickly becoming one of the most frequently accessed posts I’ve written. If you are currently writing your first academic assignment, it’s worth a look, as it sets out the process in brief and covers two key elements – the introduction and the conclusion.

I wrote very little about how to go about looking for literature to support your writing in that post, and I want to address that here – albeit in part only. Specifically, I want to write about starting your research, covering how to begin, using table of contents and indexes, and coping with unfamiliar terms and concepts.

Where shall I begin?

It is very natural to begin your search for supporting material by typing some version of the essay title into Google or Library Search, hoping to find material that covers the topic. This is sometimes a productive strategy – especially as some works in the library may be in high demand - but can just as often send you down blind alleys, make you miss more useful material or plunge you into writing that you are not yet able to understand. Try and resist.

Before searching for material to help you answer the question, start reviewing what you know already. The questions you are asked to research always relate to material that is covered to some degree in the modules that you are taking, so you shouldn’t be starting with a blank slate. Review the reading and thinking you have already done.  Then try to pose a series of questions you need to find answers for. This will help you get the most out of the literature when you start reading.

Your lecturers have supplied a reading list, and although you are often required to go beyond this, you should start here before moving on to other works.   

Using table of contents and indexes

Look in the table of contents and the index of books to try to pinpoint sections which relate to the topic you will be writing on. Think laterally about the terms you are looking for – you will need to consider synonyms, antonyms, and alternative terms which may be broader or narrower than the topic as defined in the question. This is also true when using Library Search or any other database to find resources.

Unfamiliar terms and concepts

Look for terms that you are unfamiliar with in textbooks, or in encyclopedias. Wikipedia can help, but concentrate on more authoritative sources such as subject-specific encyclopedias. The e-resource CredoReference provided by the library can really help here, providing authoritative articles on many topics – especially in the area of philosophy and cultural studies.

Referencing guides

Advice about referencing was one of the things that came up at the recent training sessions I ran on finding information sources for a disseration.  This is not surprising I suppose, since I called the session, 'Exciting Citing.'

The basics are covered in the University of Westminster's guide, 'Referencing your work'.  However, this is a general guide for all students, so does not cover some aspects - such as referencing images.  The guides referred to below do cover this using the Harvard system, so I hope they will be useful. NB: Please also refer to the 'dissertation guidelines' given by the teaching staff, and modify accordingly.

1. University of the Arts London.  Guide to the Harvard system of referencing. 
2. University for the Creative Arts.  Referencing.
3. Glasgow School of Art.  Bibliographies [part of InfoSmart Module 4]

I have also bought an e-book, which covers referencing in depth, shown below and also on the Study Skills section of this blog. 

Neville, C. (2010).  The complete guide to referencing and avoiding plagiarism, 2nd ed. Open University Press. 

This covers how to reference images, and just about everything else you might want to refer to.  It also a discusses the main types of referencing - author/date (i.e. Harvard style), consecutive numbering, and recurrent numbering. 

A couple of points that don't get good coverage are dealing with translations and reprints.  Pears and Shield (2010) suggest adding a statement of translation after the title.  For reprints, they suggest citing the original date of publication, but not the original publisher.  My interpretation of this is below.

Barthes, R. (1980).  Camera lucida; reflections on photography.  Translated by Richard Howard.  Reprint, London: Vintage, 1993. 

In text this could be Barthes (1980 [1993]).  

There are other ways of doing this, but this seems acceptable to me.

For those of us not familiar with Latin, a short explanation of the terms 'ibid' and 'op cit' follow.  These are not used in the Harvard system, but you will come across them, so its useful to be able to distinguish between the two.

Ibid = ibidim (meaning 'the same place') used to refer to an immediately preceding reference.

Op cit. = opere citato (meaning 'in the work cited') used to refer to a previously cited work, and preceded by a shortened form of the work referred to.

References

Pears, R. and Shields, G. (2010).  Cite them right; the essential referencing guide, 8th ed.  Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Summer vacation loans

The following information will be useful if you are planning on taking books out over the summer.

From Friday 25 May until Friday 8 June 3 week loans will be issued to a fixed date of Friday 15 June 2012.

From Saturday 9 June 2012 3 week books and 1 week books will be issued over the vacation period to be returned during the week beginning Monday 24 September 2012.

DVDs remain 1 week.

Photographies - new issue

The latest issue of Photographies is available online now.  When trying to access the journal outside of the university, select 'Sign in,' then 'Sign in via shibboleth,' and then 'University of Westminster.'

The following articles are included:

Globalisation and the Art Photography of Joel Sternfeld
Antigoni Memou

A Meditation on Poetry and Photography
Marnie McInnes

Imagining the Image: Photography, psychoanalysis and the affects of latency
Ignaz Cassar

“Venturing Out on a Ledge to Get a Certain Picture”: The “authentic” spaces of Alvin Langdon Coburn's Grand Canyon
Jordan Bear

Madonnas of Warfare, Angels of Poverty: Cutting through press photographs
Marta Zarzycka

Orientalizing the Bayadère/Fabricating Mata Hari
Romita Ray

British Council Film Collection - now online

The British Council Film Collection is an archive of over 120 short documentary films made by the British Council during the 1940s designed to show the world how Britain lived, worked and played.