Tuesday 11/13

Agenda for today:

• Discuss reading in Riverbend
• Introduction to podcasting.
• HW 32 and 33 were due today.
• Handout for HW 34 and 35 distributed.
• Sign up for individual conferences, which will be held 11/20 and 11/27
• Announcement that Deng Pan will come to class Thurs. 11/15 to provide an information session on evaluating sources
• Reminder that your instructor drafts are due Thursday 11/15 and while they are not graded, completion of drafts and peer reviews count for 10% of your grade for the course. Don't forget the draft and don't have a printing problem.

Research Tips

Here are some tips and reminders for conducting research for your semester-long project.
Deng Pan and the research staff at the library are available to help you (as am I). Deng can be most helpful if you email her a couple of days in advance of your visit to the library, so that she can make time to assist you.
The "Ask a Librarian" page is your friend. Does it get any more convenient than being able to IM, email, phone, or visit library staff for help?
Some more handy facts, mostly gleaned from Deng's handy orange information sheets...
Subject headings: These are the exact words that our topics are listed under in the library catalog (Keene-Link) and elsewhere. Try them in your next search.

• blogs
• communication and culture
• digital communications
• digital media
• electronic mail systems
• instant messaging
• mass media and women
• mass media - ownership
• mass media - technological innovation
• online journalism
• online social networks
• webcasting

Here are some Library of Congress classification call number categories. Go to the library and browse the sections that are relevant to your topic:

• HQ1180-HQ1186 Women's studies
• P94-P96 Special aspects of the media
• PN4784.062 Online journalism
• TK5103-TK5105 Digital communications

To find articles, you can go on the Web to Mason Library-->Find an eSource-->Indexes and Databases.

• Lexis-Nexis Academic provides full-text documents from over 6,000 publications. Since they cover a lot of newspapers and magazines, which may be your main source of information on new technologies, this database can be a powerful tool.
• GenderWatch is a full-text database that provides in-text coverage of subjects central to women's lives.
• Academic Search Premier is multidisciplinary database with full text for nearly 4,000 scholarly publications.

Other useful databases through EBSCOhost are:

• Communication & Mass Media Complete (communication and mass media)
• ERIC (education) Newspaper Source (newspapers)
• Soc-Index with Full Text (sociology)
• PsychINFO (psychology)

Thursday 10/24: Library Information Literacy Session/Virginia Woolf

For class yesterday, the different sections had different agendas.
The 12 o'clock and 4 o'clock sections went to the library for our second information session with the Mason Library's Head of Technical Services (and our library liaison for this course), Deng Pan. Deng showed us how to use the library databases to find articles with Academic Search Premier/EBSCOhost, Lexis-Nexis, and GenderWatch. Students worked in small groups on an exercise identifying the difference between popular magazines and scholarly journals, and practiced searching Academic Search Premier or another database.
Students in the 6 o'clock section reported on the progress of their semester-long projects, and discussed Chapter 2 of A Room of One's Own.
For all sections, the 7-page draft is due on Thursday. The 12 o'clock and 4 o'clock sections will do peer review. The 6 o'clock section will just hand theirs in and do peer review next week.

What did you miss in class Thursday 9/20 if you were out sick?

I handed out the HW 11 and Wikis handout, which you can get, like all handouts, at http://academics.keene.edu/tmendham/KSC.htm.
I also reminded folks that HW 12 does not have its own handout: see the Semester-long Research and Writing Project handout, also at http://academics.keene.edu/tmendham/KSC.htm. What's due Tuesday, and you must bring this printed out to class to use in peer review:

Peer draft: Proposed introductory paragraph of semester-long-writing project, including thesis statement with preliminary works cited. Identify at least two books and two popular magazine or journal articles you can use in your research.

Also, the Head of Technical Services at the college library, Deng Pan, gave us an introduction to the library, using subject headings and key words, and using Keene Link, the college library catalog. In our next session, in October, she'll cover using the databases to find articles for research. The new color scanner looks pretty cool--someone will have to tell us about it when they use it. I've been using libraries since the 1960's and this is the first I've understood the difference between a key word and a subject. Thanks, Deng!
9/20 PS: Deng also recommended Britannica Online and CQ Researcher to get background when starting a research project: go to www.keene.edu/library/Find an eSource/Databases and Indexes. I'm sure you'll find the salmon-colored handout with Subject headings and Library of Congress headings helpful as well.