Category Archives: Fall 2013

Research Consultation: Colby

Colby, Fall 2013

We began with the following questions/concerns:

  • Source management
  • Zotero
  • Time management

Source Management: When working with general sources, or sources written for a nonspecialist audience, use the index and the bibliographies rather than reading straight through. Taking the time to sort through what sources will be useful is not wasted time; it will allow you to direct your search more quickly. Helps distill the research question. In this case, we have a creative project and a critical project, and both are going to have to be built and grown at the same time. And if one part of the project isn’t flowing, you should work on the other part of the project–make time for the treatment as well as the critical introduction. But do a little bit daily–this will help manage the anxiety and make deadlines more realistic.

Colby’s DFW primary sources need a boost from secondary, lit-crit sources. Academic database searching is the way to go for this–on topics re: self-consciousness and autobiography in Infinite Jest. This is her next move!

Colby’s also going to keep an online whiteboard/general inspiration board online at Mural.ly. This will be an evolving, multi-dimensional space; the key is to always incorporate new material in relationship to old.

Zotero: We downloaded the standalone Zotero app for use on Colby’s Macbook, and discussed the benefits of the app versus the browser extension. We covered how you can use Zotero to take notes, how you can edit citations, Zotero for PDF management, and how to use it with Word when you are integrating your source material into your draft. Lindsey recommended making several Zotero folders (and/or tags) for sources: Sources I Have Read, Sources I Have Found, Sources I Have Yet To Find. She also recommended using Zotero’s “Notes” and “tags” functions for note-taking and file sorting.

Time Management: We talked about using Google Calendar for deadline management, and set suggested appointment dates in November in order to boost productivity. We also discussed the “pomodoro” technique (25 minutes of work followed by a 5 minute break), for which Lindsey recommends something like focus booster, and free apps like SelfControl, which shut off the more tempting parts of the Internet while you are working

Tablet Apps: 

  • Genius Scan is essential! Turns any iPhone or iPad into a scanner. Use this when working with books, especially in the library
  • Get a document reader that can annotate: GoodReader is a good one, Lindsey also uses iAnnotate PDF (which, despite the name, does more than PDFs)
  • Dropbox and Google Drive both have apps; be sure you are backing up your documents in the cloud
  • BEST APP EVER: Unstuck. Helps you when you are stuck! Seriously! It really works!
  • Simple Pomodoro Timer for time management/pomodoro technique
  • For getting ideas down: Lindsey likes OmmWriter (sweet interface; plug headphones in for calming music within the app) and Dragon Dictation (free! Talk to someone other than Siri!). If you are thinking visually she also recommends Paper, which is a sketchbook app.

Research Consultation: Laura

Fall 2013, Laura

We had 2 primary goals for this session:

  1. project management options
  2. Zotero mini-workshop

Project Management: Lindsey started with Lifehacker’s list of 5 top project management tools. We then talked about Google Calendar as a means of projecting out long-term deadlines. This, in combination with Laura’s current to-do list practices, seems to make the most sense at this point.

Zotero: We downloaded the standalone Zotero app for use on Laura’s Macbook, and discussed the benefits of the app versus the browser extension. We covered how you can use Zotero to take notes, how you can edit citations, Zotero for PDF management, and how to use it with Word when you are integrating your source material into your draft. Lindsey recommended making several Zotero folders (and/or tags) for sources: Sources I Have Read, Sources I Have Found, Sources I Have Yet To Find. She also recommended using Zotero’s “Notes” and “tags” functions for note-taking and file sorting.

Productivity Applications: We discussed the “pomodoro” technique (25 minutes of work followed by a 5 minute break), for which Lindsey recommends something like focus booster, and free apps like SelfControl, which shut off the more tempting parts of the Internet while you are working. We also talked about a goal of doing a little bit of work daily.

Resources for Science Fiction Research

Fall 2013, Kerishma

1:1 Research Meetings and Group Work Sessions

Fall 2013

As we head into October I want to encourage everyone not only to mail me to set up a research strategy meeting, but to also consider me a resource to help plan and run group work sessions, be they at Macaulay, at the Hunter Library, or elsewhere. If you want someone around to work alongside, please e-mail me.

For your research meeting, it will help if you’ve already done some exploration. Use the material from today’s session on online research, continue with your library research, and come to me with your questions and frustrations after you’ve begun to get into your source material.

frustrated writer

There are some additional topics I can tackle with you one on one, which we did not talk about today in any depth. If you’re interested in discussing any of these things, let me know before we meet!

  • Mac, tablet and smartphone applications related to research, productivity, and time management
  • Professional (or amateur!) organizations devoted to your subfield (such as science fiction & fantasy, or gothic literature, or even specific authors)–finding and using their web sites, conference proceedings, and other material
  • Schools and structures of literary criticism–determining what might most apply to your project, and bringing in resources to help sort out any jargon that is coming up in the sources you find
  • Integrating both qualitative (images, audio, video) and quantitative (stats! numbers!) data into your research (or even just thinking about whether or not that has a role in your project at this point)
  • Archival materials–talking further about what’s in the archives and how to get at it

Please set up a meeting with me on or before October 15th–that gives you some time to get into your sources and come up with questions I can help with, but it also gives you time to apply what we talk about in our chat. I’m at Macaulay on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons generally, but I can try to come in on another day if absolutely necessary.

After each meeting, I’ll send a record of what we discussed to both you and Prof. Isenberg.

Good luck, everyone!

–Lindsey

Lindsey’s Amazing Epic Guide To Online Research in Literature, Film, and Media Studies

Course Information, Fall 2013

Books on Adaptation: Literature to Film

This is an incomplete bibliography, but it will be a good starting point for everyone. (Links are to Amazon, but you can also search for these in the CUNY libraries or the NYPL.) Look at the books cited within these books using Amazon; look at what other books cite these books using Google Scholar.

Strategic Searching

or, why simply Googling is a bad idea:

SPECIALIZED SEARCHING IS ONE WAY YOU MIGHT START. Rather than using Google and sifting through millions of results, let some sites already dedicated to inquiry do some of the heavy lifting for you.

How To Do It

Where To Do It

REMEMBER THE FOLLOWING: Determining your keywords is going to be the key to your searching success. Keep track of what keywords you use when you run a search. The more you read, however, the more keywords you can think of. So you might not want to begin with search engines. In which case, why not try…

Subject Guides

THIS IS ANOTHER PLACE YOU MIGHT START. Put together by research librarians, these are great collections. While to some degree they are institution-specific, many also include a curated selection of quality online resources available to everyone. Bonus: They are regularly updated! Many universities put these together; the ones listed here cover both our institutional resources and high-quality open online material.

CUNY Resources and Database Subscriptions

If you need something that Hunter doesn’t have but the Graduate Center does, Lindsey will get it for you; just shoot her an e-mail.

Syllabi Repositories and Online Courses

Chances are, if it’s a good resource, someone has used it in the classroom! Syllabi repositories and online courses can give us a good sense of what other professional researchers think is the most relevant material on any given topic. Look for both courses dedicated to your specific topic, and survey courses which may touch on your project more broadly.

Syllabi Repositories

Many academic departments now use their web sites to archive their syllabi; this list is a good starting point but it is not exhaustive. Look particularly for graduate courses, which may have more secondary sources listed in the syllabus.

Online Courses

Online Clubhouses

No one does quality research in a vacuum–and this is as much true for faculty as it is for students. Many academics were (for better or worse) early adopters of the listserv; the archives remain useful places to trace questions and get informal answers. Academic blogs are where some of the most forward-thinking researchers in any field are thinking out loud–both about their research topics of interest and providing meta-analysis about how to do quality research in the digital age. And finally, an embarrassing number of scholars are hanging out on Twitter.

Oldies but Goodies

These meta-sites curated the academic web beginning in the 1990s; not all of their links will be up-to-date, but they remain a good place to find quality online sources. This is particularly true if you are doing research on pre-WWII literary material, but even those working with more recent primary sources should have a look.

Bibliography and File Management

  • Zotero is amazing. Use it. With Zotero you can…
    • collect & organize material from across the web–all kinds of sources
    • incorporate bibliographic data about your print sources (via many of the sites in this blog post)
    • create a timeline of all of your sources so that you can SEE the progression of idea
    • track recent additions to see where the trends in your ideas are headed
    • attach pdfs and do a FULL PDF TEXT SEARCH
    • add notes that are searchable by keyword
    • tag your cites (just like a tag cloud)
    • share your lists as a group and build a bibliography together
    • share private or group lists with the public!
    • 12 Must-Know Zotero Tips
  • Google Drive (formerly Google Docs) is helpful not only for storage and online collaboration, but also features a built-in “Research Tool.” This should not take the place of other research efforts but can be a helpful add-on when you’re drafting.
  • The ITFs also highly recommend Scrivener, a project management tool for writing and creating; many of us are using it to organize our dissertations. If you are managing multiple writing projects or are thinking about graduate school, we think it is worth the financial investment.

Handouts

These come to us courtesy amazing Lehman ITF Ben Miller.

Fall Schedule

Course Information, Fall 2013

Now that you’ve all started gathering info on your projects, here are the general goals for each month of the fall course:

September

  • Read Parts I & II of The Craft of Research
  • Determine your topic
  • Isolate your central question and explain its significance
  • Start collecting your source material

October

  • Each week, bring a short summary of the work you have done, a list of bullet points, make copies for everyone in the course. Bring writing as well when asked.
  • Question for the month: Who is your reader?
  • Read Part III of The Craft of Research
  • Continue to collect sources and develop your bibliography
  • Lindsey will lead a session on online research and bibliography management Tuesday Oct. 1, and you will meet with her individually between October 1 and October 8 to develop a strategic research plan
  • No Class October 15 (CUNY Monday)
  • Sharpen and refine your topic as you read your source material, continue to articulate your central claims
  • Lindsey will lead a session on “warrants” in late October
  • Have an outline done/begin drafting by the end of the month

November

  • Continue to bring a weekly summary of the work you have done on your thesis project
  • Read Part IV of The Craft of Research
  • Enlarge and refine your bibliography
  • Write your 3-5 page introduction to your thesis and bring to class to share in the first week of November
  • We will work on abstracts for NCUR this month
  • Spend the bulk of your time drafting and revising your thesis

December

  • Finish writing your thesis by mid-December.
  • The syllabus and goals for the spring semester will be available at our final fall semester class meeting.

Isenberg

Fall 2013

Mary Pearl will  join us at 4 today to hear where you are on advisers and what difficulties you may have encountered in gaining one so far, looking to how best to help.  We’ll have the first hour to ourselves and we can sharpen just where we are on topics.  Thanks.   SLI