Monday, January 14, 2019

The College Student's Research Companion

Arlene R. Quaratiello with Jane Devine, The College Student's Research Companion: Finding, Evaluating, and Citing the Resources You Need to Succeed. Neal-Schuman, 2011. 183 pages. ISBN: 978-1-55570-729-3.

Arlene R. Quaratiello's The College Student's Research Companion is a good introduction to the research process. It helps the reader to pick a topic and narrow it to a researchable topic. Second, it provides information on different types of sources and where to find them. Third, it shows how to evaluate the resources the researcher finds. Fourth, it provides general information on searching databases. Then, in different chapters it covers searching the web, the online catalog, and periodical databases. Fifth, it provides instruction on how to use reference sources for your research. Last, it covers taking notes, plagiarizing, and citing your sources. The book is written in a user-friendly way that will be understandable to beginning college students. It would also be a useful guide for librarians teaching students how to do research.

Chapter one discusses developing a research plan. First, the student must select a topic if one is not assigned to her. The author recommends a topic that interests the student. Second, the topic must be narrowed to make it a researchable topic. The student at this time might write a preliminary thesis and preliminary research question. It will probably develop or change in the process of research.

Next, the student will want to develop a research plan. They will need to identify the type of resources they will need to satisfy their information need. Then they will need to know where and how they can access these resources. The author provides information about different types of sources: Web-based resources, book, periodical resources, and other resources. The student will need also to plan their time for doing the research. The author asserts, "The research process is time-consuming" (14).

The author in chapter two discusses a method for evaluating resources. She calls the method PACAC. It stands for Purpose, Authority, Currency, Accuracy, and Content. The first step in evaluating resources is discovering why it was produced. The second step is to answer the question, who wrote it? Why should the author be trusted? Do they have the credentials or experience to be considered a reliable source. A third step is to determine when it was published. The currency of an item is more important for the sciences and the medical disciplines than it is for the Humanities. The fourth step is to determine its accuracy. You will need to have a working knowledge of the topic to determine a source's accuracy. This knowledge can be acquired through reference sources. The final step is determining if the source meets the information need of the student. The student must ask, "Does it answer the main questions that you have?" (29).

Chapter three discusses the pros and cons of searching the web. There are different types of websites: commercial sites, nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, government agencies, personal websites, country sites, and etc. It is important to evaluate websites by the PACAC method. The author also provides information on searching the web. Some of these tips are Boolean searching, advance searches, searching by subject directories. One of the problems of the web is that you never know if a site will be available the next day. A second problem is it is difficult to determine the author of the site since anyone can post on the web.

Chapter four covers searching databases generally. The author uses the example of online catalog to discuss the structure of databases. The author provides examples of different online records. She shows how a record for a book contains different fields: author, title, publisher, subject headings, etc. Another type of databases is a periodicals database. The database is made of thousands of records which includes different fields: article title, author, periodical title, subject headings or terms, etc. These fields are important because you can search these fields. Next, the author discusses searching these databases. These databases can be searched either by keywords of subject terms. An effective way to search with keywords is by boolean: AND, OR, NOT. OR broadens the search and AND or NOT narrows the search. The NOT is not used often. Combining AND, OR, NOT helps the searcher be more specific and get more relevant results. The problem with keyword searching is that the searcher can get a lot of results that are not relevant to their topic. The searcher can be more specific by doing field searching or subject searching. Databases use controlled vocabulary, so the student does not necessarily know what the terms are. An effective way to over come this is to select a few relevant results from keyword searching and see what subject terms are used for each article.

Following chapter four there are individual chapters for searching online catalogs and periodical databases. Chapter seven covers using reference resources. These sources are used for topic selection, background information, and to find out different facts. These sources include: Encyclopedias, both general and subject specific; dictionaries, sources to find statistical and geographic information; chronological information, biographical information, finding people and organizations, quotations, etc. Chapter eight discusses integrating sources into the paper. It provides information on quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing. The next part discusses how to avoid plagiarism. The last part of the chapter explains how to cite your sources.

The College Student's Research Companion is a user-friendly guide to doing research in college. It provides information on the research process, going from determining your topic to finding resources to citing your sources. At the end of chapter questions are provided to apply the concepts taught in the chapter. The answers to the questions are in the back of the book. A brief citation style guide is included for MLA, Chicago, and APA. The book is short, easy to easy, and easy to understand. The authors tried to emphasize concepts since information sources change so rapidly. I have read this book multiple times and have used it to teach students how to do research.

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

Reading Well, the Great Books, and the Good Life

Prior, Karen Swallow. On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books. Brazos Press, 2018. 267 pages. ISBN: 978-1-58743-396-2.

Karen Prior, Professor of English at Liberty University and author of Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me, in On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books show how reading great books well can build character. She uses classic works of literature to examine twelve virtues: prudence, temperance, justice, courage, faith, hope, love, chastity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility, and she also discusses the corresponding vices. Some of the authors discussed in the book are Henry Fielding, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Jane Austen and others. The author provides insight from authors of virtue ethics: Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Alasdair Mcintyre, and Josef Pieper. Prior has written an excellent book that shows how reading well the Great Books can cultivate character.

The author has been shaped by great literature. She asserts, "by reading about all kinds of characters created by all kinds of authors, I learned how to be the person God created me to be" (14). She thinks characters in literature can serve as models of virtue and vice. She encourages the reader not only to read widely, but to read well; "one must read virtuously" (15). She defines virtue as "excellence". Reading well, she says, "is in itself, an act of virtue or excellence, and it is also a habit that cultivates more virtue in return" (15). Virtue is presented in literature through the actions of its characters. In addition, it provides opportunities for the reader to practice the actual virtues. Reading virtuously means, "first reading closely, being faithful to both text and context, interpreting accurately and insightfully" (15). Reading virtuously cultivates virtue in the reader. Prior asserts, "The attentiveness necessary for deep reading (the kind of reading we practice in reading literary works as opposed to skimming news stories or reading instructions) requires patience. The skills of interpretation and evaluation requires prudence" (15). Even setting time aside for reading requires discipline. Reading well requires that we pay attention to the "words on the page."

To read well, we need to enjoy our reading. That is why she encourages "reading promiscuously." Pleasure makes it more likely that we will read. Those who enjoy reading will read which will increase their skills of reading which will increase their enjoyment from reading which will increase their reading. That is mentioned in Trelease's How to Read Aloud Handbook. She says it is best to put down the book that you are agonizing to read, and to pick up a book you will enjoy. She thinks that different people will enjoy different types of books.On the other hand, "the greatest pleasures are those born of labor and investment" (16-17). She does say that reading well requires that the book be read for itself, and not for some lesson it teaches. She quotes from C. S. Lewis about receiving a work versus using it. She makes a good point that literature must be read for both form and content or the reader needs to pay attention to both. The author states, "The virtue or excellence of literature cannot be understood apart from its form. To read literature virtuously requires attention to that form, whether the form be that of a poem, a novel, a short story, or a play. To attend to the form of a work is by its very nature an aesthetic experience" (19). There is a big difference in reading the Cliff Notes of a novel and the novel itself. Reading aesthetically is more a formative than an informative experience. Through the act of reading literature "invites the reader to participate in the experience aesthetically, not merely intellectually"(21).

In one chapter she discusses diligence through an analysis of The Pilgrim Progress. Prior uses Aristotle's doctrine of the mean to discuss this virtue and other virtues in other chapters and its corresponding vices. Diligence represents the mean between "the extreme of excess and their extreme of deficiency" (179). She shows how a major theme of Bunyan's classic work is sanctification. To grow in holiness requires diligence. In another chapter she discusses patience by examining Jane Austen's Persuasion. She shows that patience means more than waiting, but a willingness to suffer. Another virtue examined is temperance by analyzing Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones. She states that prudence is the "mother of the three other cardinal virtues" (34). Prudence is choosing right from wrong in everyday life. In Tom Jones she shows how authors use satire and in Pilgrim's Progress, symbolism.

Prior, On Reading Well, has written a book that in enjoyable to read, teaches the reader how to read well, examples of how to read classic texts, and how classic works can cultivate virtue in the reader. It was surprising how much she knew about philosophy and virtue ethics. She skillfully intertwines virtue ethics with literature. This book is highly recommended. 


Friday, January 4, 2019

A Student's Guide to Library Research

Mary W. George, The Elements of Library Research: What Every Student Needs to Know. Princeton University Press, 2008. ISBN: 978-0-691-13150-4. 201 pages.

Mary W. George, head of reference and senior reference librarian at Princeton University Library, provides a handy guide on the library research process. The author provides instruction on choosing a topic, creating research questions, developing a research plan, searching the literature, evaluating sources, developing a thesis, and much more. The book is easy to read and the reader recognize that the author has a good grasp on the process on producing some type of research product. She wrote this book because for several years she saw college students struggle with research assignments. She shows how we have information needs all the time and we do research to find answers. She shows how doing academic research is similar to the practical research that we do on a daily basis.

George defines a research project "as any task that requires, or would benefit from factual information or opinions you do not already have" (15). She divides the research process into nine stages: 1. choosing a topic, 2. engaging your imagination, 3. creating research questions pertaining to your topic, 4. developing a research plan, 5. using reference tools and searching databases, 6. retrieving sources, 7. evaluating your sources in relation to your research question, 8. having an insight from reflecting on your sources, 9. creating a thesis from your insight. This last step will lead to creating an outline and developing an argument based on your thesis. When she discusses these different steps she provides detailed information on how to accomplish the task. I will provide some examples.

She give tips on developing a topic. Asks others about possible topics. Read different general sources about possible topics. Browse sources in your course and the library. Examine primary sources.

An important resource that she introduces early and discusses throughout the research process is a research log. On the right side, you can use like a research diary, "making entries with the date and place where I did something related to my research--whether thinking, brainstorming with friends, conferring with my instructor, searching a database, browsing in the library stacks, or any other activity. I write down a phrase about what I did or read" (45). On the left side, she lists ideas, "alternate points of view," the author and title of any interesting book I turn up, call numbers she finds searching in the catalog, new questions she discovers, and so on. She keeps this research log handy and uses it throughout the research process. She finds it to be a handy tool.

The author provides many helpful hints on discovering sources. Browsing the shelves around the titles that you are looking for on the shelves. Using general and subject encyclopedias and looking at the sources they list. Looking at the footnotes or bibliography of books you examine. Examining the bibliography and notes of the articles you examine.

The author provides information on different research tools and different search strategies for searching the databases. The book includes five appendices: 1. good habits, hints, and habits to avoid. 2. Certain nuggets she provides throughout the book. 3. Research timelines. 4. Questions to ask your instructor. 5. Research appointment worksheet.

Mary George in her book, The Elements of Library Research, has provided a handy, easy to follow guide through the research process. The reader can recognize that she has much experience in doing research and guiding others to do research. Any student that picks up this book will make an excellent investment in a guide that will be quite useful for not only a immediate research projects, but future ones too!

Wednesday, January 2, 2019

How to Read Theology

Uche Anizor, How to Read Theology: Engaging Doctrine Critically and Charitably. Baker Academic, 2018. ISBN: 978-0-8010-4975-0, 182 pages.

Anizor's book is a small handbook on reading theology. In addition, it teaches the reader how to read critically and charitably. This instruction can be applied to other disciplines besides theology. Uche Anizor is assosiate professor of biblical and theological studies at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. How to Read Theology is intended to be a "primer to theological texts that introduces readers to the 'behind the scenes' happenings in those texts, helping them to better grasp the meaning of what exactly they are reading when they are reading theology" (xiv). The book is also intended to help the reader to evaluate different theologies both critically and charitably.

The book is divided into two parts. Part one discusses reading charitably. Chapter one discusses different enemies to reading charitably: pride, suspicion, favoritism, impatience. The author states  that his students and others "face several barriers to understanding and assessing theologies well" (5). Some of these deals with reading skills; others have to do with attitude. The author thinks both are required. The author uses Alan Jacobs, A Theology of Reading as a major source. That book's major theme is how can we obey the command of loving our neighbor when we read. To read charitably is to read with openness to the author. It is to seek to understand before critically evaluating the author. Chapter two discusses the "contextual dimensions of theological reading": "historical-cultural context," "ecclesial or churchly context," and "polemical context." The author thinks an understanding of the author's background and theology will better equip the reader to interpret the work charitably.

Part 2 seeks to help the reader to develop critical reading skills. Chapter three discusses different ways scripture is used in different theologies. Chapter four analyzes the relationship between theology and tradition. There are four categories of tradition considered: creeds, confessions, major teachers of the Church, and other teachers of the church. In addition, he examines different types of theological genres: conservative, critical, exc. Chapter five examines the relationship between theology and reason. He asserts, "Christian theology is not exempt from the demand to be rational" (123). The final chapter discusses theology and experience. What is the relationship between the two? How much weight should be give to personal experience in a theology?

Anizor's How to Read Theology is a good introduction on how to read theology. It is well-written and easy to understand. It seems to be balanced and not overly bias, but is fair to the different views of theology. The part of the book that discusses reading charitably is especially recommended.