Info Literacy

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INFORMATION LITERACY

All students at Union County College are expected to become "information literate" before they graduate and all college-credit courses are expected to have an information literacy component.  

"Information literacy" requires that you can do research on any topic assigned using the library and the internet.  It requires that you can distinguish facts from opinions, reputable sources from propaganda, primary sources from secondary sources, and much more.  It also requires that you can do a bibliography.  The end product of research is usually a term paper or article or book.   My sophomore level classes require such a term paper.  My freshmen level classes, that is the Western Civilization courses, require an annotated bibliography.  Both processes, doing the research for an annotated bibliography or going on to write a term paper, will help you to become information literate.

Picking a Topic

You are required to do a bibliography or research paper and you have no idea what you want to do.  Well, what interests you?  If nothing is of particular interest, pick a topic from the the assigned list or index from your main textbook and do a bit of preliminary research to find out a) is there enough material readily available to do the bibliography or research paper and b) does the topic you are researching seem even remotely interesting to you.  If the answer to either question is "no," then go on to another topic.

Throughout the process of doing research, you should be very careful to note down where the information came from.  When you quote or paraphrase someone else's information, you must footnote the material in the text of your paper and then provide a bibliography of sources cited and researched at the end of the paper.

Doing Bibliographies: MLA, APA, and Turabian Formats

There are different formats for doing bibliographies.  Different academic disciplines use different methods of citations.  Psychology and Sociology use the American Psychological Associations format for doing research.  English Professors use the Modern Languages Association style book.  Political scientists and historians use the University of Chicago Style Manual.  The University of Chicago Style Manual is a thousand page book, which has been summarized by Kate Turabian.  This abbreviated version is usually called the Turabian style format.  That is the one you will be required to use in my government and history courses.  Turabian is identical to the Chicago Style Manual.

Turabian or Chicago Manual on Style Format for Bibliography and/or Term Paper

Your annotated bibliography must use the Turabian format as adapted by me. Do NOT use MLA, APA, or any other  format.  Check out my WEB pages nested below, especially my WEB page entitled Turabian Citation Style.

Union County College Library Resources

The Union County College Kenneth C. MacKay Library has just completed a major construction project.   All of its books are back from storage.   The librarians are friendly and helpful.  Introduce yourself, ask for help, and they will be glad to lead you through this exercise.

If you have not yet explored the Library's Web pages, here it the link:  http://www.ucc.edu/library/

The Kenneth C. MacKay Library of Union County College has developed a series of resources to help you with this annotated bibliography.

The following links to various Handouts available at the Library's Web Page:
http://www.ucc.edu/Library/InstructionAndResearchGuides/ResearchGuides/LibraryHandouts.htm

A booklet on the Turabian format can be printed out from this page:
http://www.ucc.edu/NR/rdonlyres/A9F0CE7B-C355-4966-9628-D5F2248A355A/0/Turabian.pdf

And a tutorial is available at this location:
http://www.ucc.edu/NR/rdonlyres/40ADE7A2-8730-4675-8508-0E3B98A18956/0/DocumentingSourcesTurabian.pdf

 

Doing a Term Paper in my American Government, International Politics, and Geography Courses

Those of you in my sophomore-level courses are required to do a term paper.  Instructions, term paper topics, and deadlines are listed in your regular syllabus or are discussed in class.  Please note that you must use the Turabian format.  You are required to have footnotes and a bibliography.  Footnotes should be on the bottom of each page.  With word processing programs like WORD, this is very easy to do.  Your bibliography at the end of your paper does not require annotation, nor should it be grouped into categories.  These requirements apply only to my Western Civilization courses.  Simply alphabetize your bibliography.  (It is still useful to know the different kinds of research materials available.  It is useful to know the difference between an article in an encyclopedia, articles in scholarly journals, articles in popular magazines, articles in newspapers, books, and  government documents.  Each is cited differently.)

I have, however, required, my sophomore-level students to submit an outline of your term paper and a brief, at least five item,  bibliography.  Please include two books and three articles in this bibliography.  The outline can be very general but it should indicate the general content of your term paper.  Outlines usually follow a format
using Roman Numerals, Capital Letters, Arabic Numerals, and Small letters for their subdivisions.

Doing an Annotated Bibliography for Western Civilization

To do your annotated bibliography, use the format shown on the Annotated Bibliography page.

My students in the Western Civilization courses are required to do an annotated bibliography.  The specific deadlines for this annotated bibliography are found in the syllabus for each course.  The material on this page supplements the syllabus.

I have broken the process of doing the annotated bibliography into three steps.

Step One:  Select a topic for your bibliography.  Pick any person, event, or idea listed in the index of your textbook.  Clear the topic with me and start doing the annotated bibliography.  No two students will be allowed to select the same topic.  Whoever chooses first, gets the topic. 

Step Two:  Do a five entry annotated bibliography.  These five entries must be grouped into three categories:
    a.  one entry from an encyclopedia;
    b.  two book entries; and
    c.  two articles from a popular magazine or scholarly journal.

I do not want you to use WEB sources for this part of the assignment.  Do not use an internet encyclopedia.  I want to you go to a real library and look at real books.  If you can not find any articles because the library has too limited a selection of magazines and journals in print form, then you may use a data base.  The article must still be cited as if you had seen it in print form.

Step Three.  Do a ten entry annotated bibliography.  Use the five entries from Step Two and add five more.  These ten entries must be grouped into
    a.  one entry from an encyclopedia;
    b.  two book entries;
    c.  two articles from a popular magazine;
    d.  one article from a scholarly magazine;
    e.  one original source
(
If you don't what what 'an original source is, then ask one of our professional librarians at Union County College library.; and
    f.  three sources that were found on the internet. (
Read my Web page on Six Rules for Web Citations before doing this part of the assignment.)

Annotation.   

To annotate a bibliographic entry means to write a brief paragraph explaining the book or article. Briefly describe the content of the book or article. Who wrote the article? What are his or her credentials?  Include the library where you did the research and the library call numbers of the resource in your annotation.  (Do not place this information in the bibliographic entry).   Evaluate the magazine where the article appeared. Is it well known, specialized, scholarly? What?  If you used the internet, then state whose WEB site you are using.  Evaluate the usefulness, to you, of the article or book.

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Updated September 2,, 2008
Copyright Dr. Harold Damerow
Senior Professor of Government and History
Union County College
Cranford. NJ 07016