Thank you to everyone who responded with suggestions, ideas, and moral
support.
Below are the responses received for my question on finding secondary
sources.
Here is the original question:
I have a number of classes searching a variety of literature databases
for
critical analysis to support their thesis arguments, but MANY of these
students are having difficulty locating information that helps them.
There are two problems that I see: the students do not seem to have the
patience to read a number of documents searching for their support and
have complained about "not finding anything" after 45 minutes of
searching.
The second problem I see is that students put in their search terms
usually the title of the book, author and maybe a term that is included
in
their thesis, such as individuality, or suppression, and expect to have
their critical analysis provided to them in the first few documents.
They do not seem to have the know how, or skill to read documents that
may
not directly address their ideas yet still be able to extract
information
to use to support their thesis.
Have I articulated the situation well enough that someone might be able
to
give me some advice for how to help these kids find and use secondary
sources?
Thanks for any ideas.
MJ
RESPONSES:
I don't have any answers, but I definitely have noticed this trend:
computers imply a relationship with a consumer: you type in a question,
you get an answer. Of course, research (re-SEARCH) isn't like that--the
searching part is the part that kills them. I remember going through 20
books at the library (in college) to find maybe 8 I wanted to check out
and go home and hopefully find 2-3 that after reading them more
thoroughly actually had what I needed. The best advice I can give is to
stress the SEARCH part and encourage teachers to have students practice
reading 3-4 sources and then deciding which one actually works for a
given topic---the thing about research is, we often tell them what to
do, but don't actually teach or scaffold the skills . .
I am catching up on LM Net today and read your message. I have the same
situations with most of my students. One thing I show them (and this may
not be what you are looking for)is the "Find on this page" feature in the
browser. It is found in various places depending on the browser and the
version that is used. I'm on an older computer right now with IE6 (long
story why not updated) and it is under "Edit" on the toolbar at the top.
On my other newer computer with IE7 I click on an icon of a magnifying
glass to access this feature. Students can enter their keywords and click
to find those words on the webpage.
These is a article on summarizing on
http:www.adlit.org
Tell them to not be so specific..to leave their topic broad. We encounter
this also with our juniors every year who will type in:
War justifies the restriction of civil liberties and expect to find it
that way.
Wow. This sounds like it might spark some LM_NET discussion!
Yes, the students may need more assistance with search strategies, but I
see the same problem that you have: students that don't yet understand
that there's a good deal of reading involved in research.
As I see it there is a trade off that they don't quite get: either you
spend a great deal of time on the front end of the research * planning
search terms, defining your needs * or you spend it on the back end *
reading material that doesn't match those undefined needs.
Either way, as we know, the middle part * learning from your reading and
redefining your needs * also takes time.
You don't mention the ages of your researchers. 9th graders just don't
have the practice (and maybe, in terms of brain development, some of them
cannot process this concept). By 12th grade, especially if they're going
to college, this is a skill that they should understand and be working to
hone.
I'm not sure if this addresses your concern. There's also the aspect of
teaching them the difference between searching the internet and searching
subscription databases. Once again, yes, it is easier to type in whatever
sloppy search terms in to google, and quite another thing to master the
intricacies of a high quality subscription database.
Hmm. This turned into a bit of a rant. Sorry.
You've articulated it perfectly, and all I can say is that I have
the same problem with my students. The only tips I've been able to
share with them are:
Like with all searches, if they get no hits with the terms they are
using, try variants or wild cards:
If they get nothing with author/title + suppression, try
a/t + suppres*
(suppress, suppressed, suppressive)
a/t + oppres*
(oppression, oppressive, oppressed, etc.)
a/t + repres*
(repression, repressive)
a/t + domina*
(dominance, domination, dominant)
a/t + any other words
related to suppression they can think of.
Like with all searches, if they get no hits with the terms they are
using, try broadening the search term:
a/t + totalitarian (the
cause of the suppression might be the totalitarian government)
a/t + government
a/t + society (one of
the traditional conflicts in literature is between individual and
society, which prob is the case in a novel in which a kid
wants to search "suppression")
And if students DO get search results, but lack the skills to skim the
articles well, I find that many of them do not know about Control-F for
"Find." If they get a list of long documents, they can quickly "next"
through them by searching each document for their unique search term:
Ctrl-F and then type suppres* to see where in the
document that word appears.
I think the biggest problem, though, is that today's student expects
instant retrieval, and the basic research skill of "plodding through" is
something they have not developed. If you'll recall, we used to deal
with alphabetical order in dictionaries, phone books, and volumes like
Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. We had to physically SEARCH,
and not just type something in and see what comes up. We had to wait
until the newspaper was published, or until the news was on in order to
find out what was happening. We now live in an era of instant
information slapped in our faces; look at the 24-hour news programs that
don't just have an anchor person, but banners scrolling across the top
and bottoms of the screens with other stories at the same time, as well
as the time and temperature posted in the corner. When faced with an
overload, it's human nature to glance for three seconds and move on to
the next, and not devote the time to fully absorb any one thing. I
don't know how we, as librarians, help students develop the patience and
focus on task that true research requires.
Don't mean to preach. Sorry. I reread my message and thought--who does she
think she is!
I am attaching a list of literary resources that I give to our seniors
when researching for their similar papers.
Literary Criticism Websites
[ http://www.ipl.org/div/litcrit/ ]http://www.ipl.org/div/litcrit/ IPL
Literary Criticism
[ http://mciu.org/~spjvweb/litpath.html
]http://mciu.org/~spjvweb/litpath.html Pathfinder for Literary Criticism
[
fcp://@franklin.k12.ma.us,%236701453/Mailbox/litcritwww.chicousd.org/pvlib/english.htm
]http://www.chicousd.org/pvlib/english.htm#litcrit
Literary Criticism Links
[ http://www.shambles.net/pages/learning/infolit/litreview/
]http://www.shambles.net/pages/learning/infolit/litreview/
Literature Review Links
[ http://www.litencyc.com/ ]http://www.litencyc.com/ Literature
Encyclopedia
[ http://www.millikin.edu/aci/crow/links.html
]http://www.millikin.edu/aci/crow/links.html
American Literature Web Resources
[ http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/flackcj/LitIndex.html
]http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/flackcj/LitIndex.html
Internet Resources in Literature
[ http://www.thejournal.com/highlights/roadmap.aspx
]http://www.thejournal.com/highlights/roadmap.aspx
Language and Literature Links from THE Journal
[ http://home.gwi.net/brhs/engla.html ]http://home.gwi.net/brhs/engla.html
English Language Arts Links
[ http://www.galenet.com/servlet/LitIndex
]http://www.galenet.com/servlet/LitIndex Gale Literary Index
Representative Poetry and Criticism [
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display/index.cfm
]http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display/index.cfm
[ http://bestoflegends.org ]http://bestoflegends.org
Legends and the stories behind them
[ http://www.literature.org/ ]http://www.literature.org/ Online Library
of Literature
[ http://www.sil.org/~radneyr/humanities/litcrit/gloss.htm
]http://www.sil.org/~radneyr/humanities/litcrit/gloss.htm
Glossary of Literary Criticism
[ http://www.virtualsalt.com/litterms.htm
]http://www.virtualsalt.com/litterms.htm Glossary of Literary Terms
[ http://www.literaryhistory.com/ ]http://www.literaryhistory.com/
Literary [Marker]History and Author Links
[ http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Lit/
]http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Lit/ Literary Resources on the
Ne[Marker]t
[ http://www.luminarium.org/lumina.htm
]http://www.luminarium.org/lumina.htm Lum[Marker]inarium—Renaissance
Resources
[ http://digital.nypl.org/schomburg/writers_aa19/
]http://digital.nypl.org/schomburg/writers_aa19/
African American Women Writers the 19t[Marker]h Century
[ tttp://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/ren.htm
]http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/ren.htm - t An Online Repository of
Works Printed in English Between the Years 1477 and 1799
[ http://www.theatlantic.com/index/books
]http://www.theatlantic.com/index/books The Atlantic Online Books
[Marker]& Critics
[ http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/ ]http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/
NY Times Book Reviews/Find an Author
[ http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/works.html
]http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/works.html
The Complete Works of William Shak[Marker]espeare
[ http://www.pulitzer.org/ ]http://www.pulitzer.org/ The Pulitzer
P[Marker]rizes
[ http://www.ipl.org ]www.ipl.org Internet Public Library
[ http://www.Bartleby.com ]www.Bartleby.com Dictionary, Thesaurus,
Quotations, Etc.
[ http://www.biography.com/ ]http://www.biography.com/ The Biography
Channel
[ http://lii.org/ ]http://lii.org/ Librarians’ Internet Index
[ http://www.virtuallrc.com/ ]http://www.virtuallrc.com/ Virtual
Learning Resource Center
It sounds to me like the students need a lesson in crafting their search
terms.
1. Do not search for the title of your book. Leave off the, a, an.
2. Add terms to limit your search like contemporary criticism, reviews,
decade published i.e. 1850s, author biography and so forth.
3. Teach them how to limit their results by using advanced search options.
4. Teach them to select and print a portion of the document, with the URL
info of course.
5. If it is offered, tell them to e-mail pertinent documents home so they
can peruse them at their leisure.
Personally, I think teachers give too little instruction and too much time
for research assignments.
Students have the most success when given a few good sites to search.
I think we as librarians are here to guide students to the best
resources, to help with searches, word processing and documentation, but
not to teach how to do a research paper.
I see our students having these same sorts of problems. The teachers work
with the them on skimming and scanning skills, and one teacher requires
them to print out (or copy if from a book) and highlight at least one
paragraph from each of 8 sources, that they THINK will be helpful. They
have a 8 school periods in the library to work on this project, which
means they need to find at least one source each day. By forcing them to
copy and highlight the paragraph(s) they THINK will be useful, it gives
them concrete material to work with. They aren't forced to use the
material if it later proves to be irrelevant, but having 8 possibilities
gets them well started.
When they schedule this library time, I and my colleague are on hand to
help them with their searches. We try on a one-to-one basis to make sure
they are searching in ways that will be successful. Sometimes we have to
just throw up our hands, though. We had a student fixated on a very
narrow thesis on a minor work of a seldom-studied author. He has insisted
on choosing that topic against the advice of the teacher. And finally I
just said to him that I didn't think he was going to find much, and good
luck to him. If he isn't willing to look at his topic in a broader
manner, or consider changing the focus, then he is going to reap the
consequences of finding very little material.
Do you use Literature Resource Center? I like this because there is a
whole section devoted to the criticism. Once they are there they can
hunt through the many articles to try to find what they want.
I hear you! I worked at the HS level for 5yrs and I think this is just how
kids are now. They are unwilling to put in any kind of effort to really
*search* and become frustrated after very little time. I'm surprised you
said after 45 mins. I had students get frustrated after 5-10 mins. They
just expect everything delivered to them. They don't want to have to dig.
I think this is a factor of our instant society. Who has to wait for
anything anymore?
I don't think you're doing anything wrong. I think you just have to tell
the kids to be persistent, to try multiple terms and to have the patience
to READ!
I see this with MS kids too. If they are looking for info in text and they
actually have to read a couple of paragraphs to find the answer they will
invarialby say "I can't find it."
I think this is pretty scary. What kind of learners are we going to have
in the future?
Sorry if I sound cynical but, I've been doing this for 10 years and this
is what I have seen again and again.
Your analysis is perfectly clear. What to do about it is not.
Unfortunately, you have found a major problem in our society. We have
come to expect instant everything, and kids, especially, have little
patience.
Probably the best solution to the problem is some good, old-fashioned
teaching. Before the research project begins, spend some time with the
class teaching about keyword searching, Boolean searching, etc. Then
take them to the library, put them on a database, and have them practice
what you just taught them. Have them practice on a topic that is NOT
part of their expected research, so that they see they can use a skill
in more than one place.
Remember that Google will give them millions of hits, no matter what
they type in, so they see that our databases don't work as well as
Google because the database doesn't give them an instant answer. The
fact that most of what Google produces is actually worthless is beside
the point to them.
Thank you again.
MJ
Mary Jane Waite
High School Librarian
Franklin, MA 02038
waitem@franklin.k12.ma.us
http://www.franklin.ma.us/auto/schools/fhs/depts/library/default.htm
Currently Reading: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
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