Developing a Library Research Strategy

Taking precious time to develop a strategy for your research may be the farthest thing from your mind, especially if you have a paper due this week. But, conceptualizing what you are attempting to do and how you should go about it can save you some much needed time in the long run.

Thinking is not a waste of time!

The most important part of planning is thinking about one's choice of research topic or question. It may feel unproductive, but is crucial to success

Spend some time thinking about how to extract a reasonable topic from an area of general interest. A professor may suggest a good research question, and even give you an important article to read. You may immediately start to explore references in its bibliography. Research is just not a linear activity. Early on, you may need to consult a periodicals index and the library catalog. At some point, you may need to find background information in reference books, but it would be rare, in actual practice, to start with them.

You haven't lived until...

Research skills are the result of living with a discipline long enough to know how its practitioners have structured its knowledge and research. Being a skilled researcher means knowing something about:

• Areas of specialization within the discipline
• The body of knowledge that has been validated and assimilated by research
• What constitututes a valid research question in the discipline
• What scholars have contributed to significant research in the field
• Which journals or (other avenues of publication) are most important
• What scholarly or professional organizations determine the direction of the discipline

Research is not just compiling a bibliography about a topic!
Writing a research paper is not about cutting and pasting the work of others!

Research is about bumping into new ideas, actively thinking about them, and working with them. You may use existing data, but employ original methods. Research is about drawing your own conclusions, expressing your own ideas, and contributing to what is known.

Getting a focus

The first hurdle, and the most difficult part of the process, is to choose a research topic, find out about it, and decide how to narrow it so that it is workable for a term paper.

If your instructor has given you guidance about what constitutes a good research question in your subject area, you are ahead of the game. If not, you may need to take some time to look at what is currently being written before deciding on a focus.

Research strategy models are not "one size fits all."  Adapt what you have read and learned about reference/research tools and the strategy outlined in Chapter 2 of the LR102 text, Making Sense of Library Research: A Guide for Undergraduates.

Three suggested research strategies are shown below. Use the parts that apply to your immediate problem and forget the rest for the moment. Devise your own plan, but at the very least, do the following:

• Be aware of any special words or vocabularly associated with your topic, and take note of terms that work in subject indexes. Keep a list if you have the discipline.
  
  
• Notice names, journal articles, or books that are repeatedly cited in many other articles or books. Pursue them.
  
  
• Write when the spirit moves you. You do not have to write the whole paper at the end in one frenzied burst of activity, unless you know that this is your best style.

Once you've decided on a topic and narrowed it, your quest to find information, explore important questions, and compose your report will begin to fall into place.

A trio of research strategy models

These models were originally developed by Deborah Fink, and adapted for this course by permission. If you would like to consult the source, see the following book:

Deborah Fink. Process and Politics in Library Research: A Model for Course Design.           Chicago: American Library Association, 1989. UNCA GENERAL Z 711.2 .F53 1989

Basic strategy for undergraduate papers:

Current Interest topics:

Strategy for advanced researchers with prior knowledge of subject:

The distribution of scholarly information

As you evaluate resources, it may help to reflect on the way scholarly information is produced and distributed. Why do some studies get published, while others do not? What terminology gets into the thesauri used to index materials in periodical indexes and library catalogs? What terms do not? How long does it take the thesaurus to catch up with current research? How does the marketplace drive the publishing industry? What's the difference between scholarly and popular works? Does the need for tenure affect scholarship as much as profit affects the media?

A simple model, also developed by Deborah Fink and published in her book, Process and Politics in Library Research (see citation above), illustrates the circulation of information in academia and elsewhere. This diagram has been adapted by permission.

Information Processing Model

	Communication Author writes article or book.
Assimilation Evaluation Selection Researcher incorporates new knowledge or information into the body of knowledge on subject by evaluating and selecting what is "important" or significant.		Dissemination Scholarly or commercial publisher accepts item for publication.
		Acquisition Organization Preservation Bookstores or distributors sell the periodical or book. Libraries select and preserve it It gets indexed, preserving access for future scholars. Organizations may endorse it.
	Access The reader or researcher discovers the article or book. The reader "connects" with the work and the author.

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Originally created by Araby Greene in Fall 1998. Last updated by Bryan Sinclair, Public Services Librarian. 22 April 2002.

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