Kickstart 2010 On-line Research

Research Assignments at tertiary level require specialist knowledge which can only be gained by research. You are expected to show that you have read and comprehended the literature on a topic. Although it is good to start with general sources to get your head around the topic, higher marks will be gained by careful selection and discussion of the literature. You cannot read everything. It is a good idea to ask the lecturer which texts or articles on the reading list are best for a certain topic.

IT skills In order to surf the internet to find sources for your academic assignments you need some basic skills: Typing Computer operation Software commands. It is also important to show common sense, avoid looking through rubbish in the hope of finding something valuable. And have courage, not much can really go wrong.

Benefits Although most subjects will have a primary text, it is always useful to look for supplementary material and alternative points of view. Many online sites will provide an abstract of the article, which will give you a quick summary of the paper and its major argument or point. Reading abstracts provides a quick and fairly thorough grounding on a topic and then you can choose which articles are worth reading in full. And of course electronic texts are great to cut and paste out of. But remember to always provide full references and quotation marks.

Subject areas Different academic areas have their own Journals and directories. Usually you will be provided with a Unit Outline for each subject which lists useful Journals as well as a reading list. This should be your first and major source of Journal articles.

Online Encyclopedias There are many online Encyclopedias. An Encyclopedia provides general information and is only useful as an initial source. You should not refer to or quote from an Encyclopedia in your essays. But they are a good source of introductory information. Wikipedia is often used as a quick source of information. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Further links Wikipedia has an especially useful feature, at the bottom of the page on each topic is a list of references and links to further information. Many of these links are to sound academic sites.

GOOGLE Scholar This is an excellent resource for searching for academic titles. You can search by author or title. For best results place your search in quotation marks. If you are using this on a library computer it should provide you with a full version of the article. Off-campus you will probably only get abstracts. There is no need to buy Journal articles but it does provide this option. The options to find Related articles, Cited articles and Group articles are also useful. http://scholar.google.com.au/

JSTOR Like Google Scholar, JSTOR provides abstracts of papers. Again if you are on a campus computer you should gain access to full articles but usually not from home unless you pay for a subscription. But why pay when your university can provide free access?

BUBL Link and ALEX http://www.infomotions.com/alex/ BUBL Link is a British directory of Journal articles on many subject areas. It works much like Google Scholar and JSTOR. http://bubl.ac.uk/ ALEX is an online directory of complete classic texts. http://www.infomotions.com/alex/

E-Books Books that are out of copywrite can often be found on the web for free. This is especially true of classics but beware of poor translations.

Links I have included a word document on the Kickstart 2009 Resources CDrom titled 8c.E-Text on line.doc This document has a list of on-line directories of articles and ebooks which you can browse for free. All the directories I have discussed today and more are provided there with their full URLs (on-line addresses).

Forums There are also many on-line Forums where you can ask questions on a topic and get responses from people all over the world.

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