Research is the process of creating a body of information unique to a task. This may be done through either formal or informal methods. Informal research is talking. It is seeking advice or expertise, generally in person, although technologies such as e-mail allow for computer mediated talk. Formal research involves the library, indexes, materials published in a formal manner, although, again, computer technology has changed this insofar as libraries can be accessed from an office or from home. Search the Library Catalog.
A bibliography is a list of all the materials consulted to create a research project. Bibliographies can include references to books, magazine articles, journal articles, Internet sites, movies, recordings, and interviews done by the researcher. The bibliography that concludes a research paper is written to certain specifications, such as the MLA or APA formats (your instructor will let you know which s/he wants). In addition, any time you use the Sail catalog or online periodical indexes you create a bibliography with your search. As each search uncovers new material, it modifies your paper and you hone the bibliography further. As you can see, a bibliography is not something just tacked on to your paper, but a record of the ideas you developed; a record for interested readers of your work.
The library catalog is the online database listing records for all of the items physically located in the Jim Dan Hill library (books, movies, sound cassettes, government documents, and titles of journals) plus access to e-books. The library catalog can be searched by author, title, subject, or keyword. There is no "card catalog" any more, it is all online.
Books can be sent from other UW libraries through a cooperative lending agreement called Universal Borrowing or UB. The online library catalog has connections to search the collections of the UW libraries and place UB requests. For materials not held by any UW library, Interlibrary Loan (ILL) can usually fill requests but it may take longer. If you don't do anything else in the first days after receiving an assignment and selecting a topic, request the books you are likely to need on their way through UB and ILL.
Indexes are used to search for articles on a topic from an assortment of periodicals. Anything that is published in an ongoing manner is considered 'periodical,' including newspapers, magazines and journals. Because of their brevity, currency, and specificity, articles from periodicals are a good fit for research papers. Periodical Indexes are found in the Jim Dan Hill Library both in paper format and electronically on the Library Index Pages. Each Index covers a different academic discipline or group of disciplines. If you are not familiar with the library's indexes, the best way to identify which index you should use is to ask a Reference Librarian for a lead. Indexes will provide you with a citation for an article: that is, you will find a list of the author, the title of the article, and the title and volume of the journal that contains the article that matched the terms you searched. In some cases the citation will also contain an abstract, which is a short summary of the article you found. In some cases the articles themselves can be accessed directly on the computer.
Most of the electronic indexes contain the full copy of certain articles. In the case of Ebsco Academic Index or Infotrac Expanded Academic ASAP you do a search on a term or terms and in the list of retrieved titles you are prompted as to which ones contain not only a citation, but also the text of the article (In Ebsco it is a little picture of a book, in Infotrac it is the phrase "view text" in the citation). You can send the articles directly to the printer, or save the information to a disk. It is important to remember, however, that simply because an article is available full text does not necessarily mean that it is the best choice for the project you are working on. For example, your instructor may require you to use scholarly journal articles; that is, journals with a very specific focus and with articles that are written by and for people with a background in a particular specialization. Scholarly journals often have titles like Journal of Humanistic Psychology. If you have used a general index, you may only retrieves articles from general popular magazines, such as Time or Newsweek. These would not fulfill the requirements for your assignment. You need to be constantly making choices about finding the 'best' available article for the project, not just the most conveniently available article. Other indexes, like Project Muse or the Journal of Chemical Engineering, are different because entire journals are available cover to cover through the Web link.
The Internet can be a marvelous research aid, but it is also a 'buyer beware' market when it comes to information published there. Firstly, because of copyright restrictions, you may find that much of the complete information you need for your research project is not available, or the version that you find may be horribly outdated. You may find where the information 'lives' on the Internet, but discover that you are forbidden to use it - or restricted until you pay a fee. Secondly, there is no editorial control on the Internet. Anyone, and I mean anyone, can claim whatever they want about whatever they want in this medium. One has to be a skeptical reader when it comes to Internet resources and this adds time to the process. A substantial portion of Internet resources can best be described as recreational self publishing. The Internet is a great hobby, but that doesn't necessarily jibe with research. All that said, the Internet can be an effective medium for publishing, as is the case with Project Muse, and through this medium you can find unique resources that can make a research project shine. For more on how to judge what's worthwhile on the 'Net, see the topic, "Assessing the Quality of Information on the Internet."
Computers are sold to students and faculty with the promise that they will speed up research and provide information instantly. This is simply not true. What a computer can do is potentially make more material available in a more organized fashion, but coming up with terms that will create a useful bibliography from an index takes time. Further, the more material that is available, the longer it will take to read and evaluate the material. If you sit down at a computer with the mindset that you will be able to complete your research in an hour, you've lost before you've begun. If you sit down believing that a computer can animate libraries far beyond the walls of the one you're in, you have a good chance at a successful project.
The University buys different software and hardware from different companies. Some packages are designed better than others. Since the network is assembled to meet dissimiliar needs, very different systems have to try to interact, and this is bound to lead to problems. Also, no matter how often we coin terms like "technology" or "powerful" or "sophisticated," computers are machines and machines are prone to breakage -- and they can't think for themselves. They depend on you. So, don't wait to the last minute to start research...allow that the technology might not be available when you want it.
Well it's possible, and I can't stop you, but consider the consequences. If you get caught you might receive a failing grade in that particular course, or even be thrown out of school. More importantly, you are cheating yourself by not doing the work. It is through your course work that you get your education. This isn't high school. If you circumvent research, you circumvent learning. Also, research is your chance to show your personal creativity in academic life. Instructors set down curriculum, but in your research you can devise your own path.
Research is a method for taking the abstract ideas of others, assimilating them, and then interpreting them in a way that is relevant to you. No matter how small, any research project could be the one where you begin to shape the ideas that will be the basis of your life's work.