Assignment: You must find at least three appropriate scholarly sources relevant to Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man (or one of the other two available primary sources) and write up a research report documenting your research process and evaluating your sources. You must find a scholarly source using each of the following methods:
Find two scholarly articles or books using article databases accessible through the CSULA Library.
Find one scholarly source (article or book) by “chasing” citations in the bibliographies of other scholarly sources.
Writing up your Research Report. Your report should have the following sections, clearly labeled like in the example provided in this week’s module.
Primary Sources and Topic. In this section you must explain your topic (in your own words) and discuss how you will develop your argument for Paper 1. You should be sure to keep focus on the primary sources you will write about and how you see them taking a position in relation to your topic. This section must be a minimum of 100 words long.
Search terms: The research report you turn in should have a list of search terms you generated to help you find scholarship appropriate for your paper. Drawing on the readings from class and your topic, write down all search terms you think might be helpful for finding scholarly sources on Darwin’s work. You should continue to build on your lists of search terms based on what you discover in the research process (such as Library of Congress terms).
Scholarly article or book #1 (see * below).
Scholarly article or book #2 (see * below).
Scholarly source “chased” (see * below). *For each of the three scholarly sources you find, you need include the following information in this order. Be sure to label each of these sections in the log:
MLA Citation. Give the full MLA citation for your scholarly source.
Give the discipline relevant for the scholarly source.
Passage “chased.” If you found the scholarly source by “chasing” a citation (#5 above), then type out the passage that you chased.
Database searched. List the name of the database you searched to find the scholarly source (e.g., JSTOR, Academic Search Premier, CSULA Library Catalog, WorldCat, etc.).
Type of search. List the type of search you used to find the scholarly source (e.g., keyword, author, subject, etc.).
Search term(s) used. List the search term(s) you used when you found the scholarly source.
Write an evaluation (of approximately 50 words) analyzing how this scholarly source seems appropriate for your final paper based on the information you find in the library database. You could discuss how the title seems to relate to your
topic, how the discipline seems to relate to your primary source, and how it may fill a gap or contribute something unique to your research.
Informational Overview. Pick one of your scholarly sources to read and give an information overview. The overview should have the following elements:
Summary of the thesis (50 word minimum).
Paraphrase 1. Give a paraphrase of an important piece of information—historical fact, biographical detail, or theoretical approach, etc.—that relates to your primary source and/or topic (2-4 sentences).
Paraphrase 2. Give a paraphrase of another important piece of information— historical fact, biographical detail, or theoretical approach, etc.—that relates to your primary source and/or topic (2-4 sentences).
Research report evaluation. This section must be a minimum of 150 words. In this section you must discuss the research process so far. You should answer questions like the following in the course of your discussion:
What have you learned about the information and sources available on your primary sources and topic?
What types of searches, search terms, and search strategies were the most successful and which were the least successful?
How much scholarship does there seem to be on your primary sources and topic?
What other issues or sources come up a lot in your searches?
