Your Name:

Your email address (please write clearly):

What are your main interests:

In school?

Out of school?

Are you working outside of school? (full-time or part-time?)

What is your level of educational preparation:

__high school __some college coursework __completed the following college degree_______________________

What are your plans for future work and education?

LIBRARY EXPERIENCE Please check the appropriate responses.

Have you had training in how to do research?

__Yes, in high school
__Yes, in college
__No, I've learned on my own

Would you consider yourself computer literate?

__Yes, I'm pretty comfortable with computers
__I am moderately comfortable with computers
__I need to learn more about computers to feel comfortable
__I am just beginning to use computers

RESEARCH SKILLS

__email
__library online catalog
__periodical databases
__web browsers
__search engines
__word processing
__saving files to a hard-drive or disk
__attaching and sending files by email
__opening email attachments

LIBRARY SERVICES

__interlibrary loans reserves
__reference service
__AV/Media services
__library orientations or workshops
__Other: _____________________________

KNOWLEDGE OF RESEARCH STRATEGIES

Forming a research question from a broad topic:
If you wanted to research the topic Internet file sharing, what might be a research question you could formulate? For example, "Should students be allowed to download and share music files from the Internet?" Please try to formulate your own research question on that same broad topic:

Identifying keywords
Using the research question you drafted above, what keywords might be good to use in the first stages of research? (Please list two or more. If you didn't write your own research question, use the question given in the example).

Resources for research
To begin research on the question you wrote above, what kinds of resources do you think you would use to find answers to your question? (Please list as many as you can think of. If you didn't write a research question, use the question given as the example.)

Distinguishing popular from scholarly periodicals
Popular periodicals (like Newsweek or Atlantic Monthly) are written to appeal to the general public. What are some of their other characteristics?

Scholarly periodicals (like American Sociological Review or Journal of Social Psychology) are written to appeal to researchers and students in the field of study. What are some of their other characteristics?

Distinguishing Primary from Secondary Resources

An example of a primary resource would be:

An example of a secondary resource would be:

Using the World Wide Web for Research
Let's say you begin your research on the topic in the sample research question above using the World Wide Web. What are the first couple of steps you would take?

Evaluating Web sites
How do you know whether a site you have found on the World Wide Web includes information that is reliable and appropriate for academic research?

Plagiarism
Plagiarism is presenting the work of others as though it were your own; it is a form of theft. Which of the following is an example of plagiarism? (check all that apply)

• Using phrases and sentences of others as if they were your own without giving credit
• Using ideas of others as if they were your own without giving credit
• Copying text written by someone else and using it with no quotation marks
• Rewording someone else's information and using it without giving credit
• Using copyrighted images from the Web without giving credit

Using different types of resources
Information you find on a research topic may come from:
(1) Printed materials and electronic resources made available through libraries (for example, databases that provide fulltext copies of periodical articles) OR
(2) Materials you find using Web search engines

What are some of the major differences between these two sets of materials?

Research Process: If your instructor assigns a 10-15 page research paper, what first steps will you take to plan, research, and report on the assigned topic?

How would you begin?

How would you find what you need?

How would you organize what you find?

How would you complete the task?