Registration Available now
Title: Digging Deeper: Strategies for Research in Communication Studies
Presenters/Facilitators: Amy James, Director of Instruction and Information Literacy, Baylor University; Robbie Bolton, University Librarian, Spring Arbor University
Date and Time: Thursday, June 2, 2022 | 11:30 – 3:00 pm EDT
Description: In this workshop, seasoned research and reference librarians Amy James and Robbie Bolton will provide you with an introduction to using different types of resources to conduct Communication-related research. You will discover resources specific to the field of communication as well as some ancillary databases you may find useful (i.e. databases that index communication content), including resources and databases helpful in locating sources in Christian and religious communication.
Presenters will focus on the process of creating a research strategy by helping you to develop appropriate Boolean search strings with both keywords and subject headings. These search strategies will prepare you to conduct effective and efficient searches to find the research that you need. You will also learn how to do citation index searching which can help you see how often a particular item has been cited by others and provide you with data on the impact of different journals and authors. Citation indexes track the references from bibliographies and give you the insight to help you analyze literature on your topic in a way that is not possible through just keyword searching.
The workshop will conclude with helpful strategies for how you can organize and manage your research using a free, open-source citation manager including but not limited to Zotero. Zotero and others like it can help you to create virtual folders to hold various articles and sources that you have found throughout the research process as your work individually or collaborate with others. It can also help you to generate source citations in Microsoft Word and/or Google Docs.
Amy James (MLIS, Wayne State University) is the Director of Instruction and Information Literacy at the Baylor University Libraries. She guides the library’s instructional strategies and develops curriculum for information literacy instruction sessions with Baylor’s first-year writing courses and other campus partnerships. She also serves as the library liaison for the School of Education. Her research interests include active learning in information literacy instruction and meta-literacy in the academic library. Amy is a member of the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries (including the Education and Behavioral Sciences subsection, the ERIC Users Group, and the Library Instruction Round Table), and the Association of Christian Librarians.
Robbie Bolton (MS, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) is the University Librarian at Spring Arbor University. He received an MS in information/archives from the School of Information at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and holds a BA in history from Spring Arbor University. An avid cyclist and hiker, he also teaches a backpacking course every year and enjoys hiking on the Appalachian Trail. He resides in Jackson, Michigan with his wife and three children.
Registration Fee: $25.00
Registration Available now