Homework assignments count for 50% of your grade.

Due September 12 (Monday)

Search the library catalog to find 5 books about Google. Each book should be predominantly if not exclusively about Google. Make a copy of this Google Doc worksheet in your own Google Docs account (ask me if you don't know how to do this). Then in your copy of the worksheet, for each book you will list the author(s), the title, the call number, and the description of that book's call number (use the Library of Congress Classifcation Outline) broken into the class, sub-class, etc.

If you have any questions about the assignment or problems with Google Docs, please email me right away (do not wait until class to tell me that you had a problem or question). I check email several times a day every day and will get back to you ASAP.

Due September 21 (Wednesday)

1. In Google Docs, make your own copy of this worksheet: LIB 1015 - homework - AND vs OR
2. Run the set of searches listed on the handout in Academic Search Complete
3. On your copy of the worksheet, enter the number of hits you got for each search.
4. Run the same searches in the library catalog (search All CUNY Libraries, not just Baruch) and then on the worksheet, enter the number of hits you got for each search.
5. Share with me your completed worksheet.

Due October 3 (Monday)

1. In Google Docs, make your own copy of this worksheet about background research.
2. Follow the instructions on the worksheet.
3. When you're done with the assignment, share it with me in Google Docs (make sure you share it with my Gmail address and not by Baruch email address).

Due October 12 (Wednesday)

This is the first assignment where you have to demonstrate that you are beginning to focus in on the topic you'll work on for the final project. By the end of the semester, you will have moved from a general topic to a highly specific, answerable research question. This homework assignment requires that you show me some of the work you are doing to learn more general info about a topic you are likely to investigate further.

For this assignment, you will need to complete two related tasks:

Task 1

• Using Gale Virtual Reference Library and Wikipedia, find 5 different entries on your topic or clearly related to your topic. You may not use more than 2 entries from Wikipedia.

• For each item you find, write down a proper citation using MLA style for that encyclopedia entry and in 2-3 sentences, tell me what you learned from that entry that you didn't already know. Here is the model for MLA citation to use:

  • Author of the entry (if any; some entries, such as those in Wikipedia, have no author listed). "The Name of the Entry Goes Here." The Name of the Encyclopedia Goes Here (use italics). Name(s) of the editor(s) of the encyclopedia. City where the encyclopedia is published: Name of the publisher of the encyclopedia, Year that the encyclopedia was published. Pages where entry is found. Name of database (if any) where this encyclopedia is hosted online. Web. Date you accessed the entry.
  • Example of a Wikipedia entry and an entry from Gale Virtual Reference Encylopedia:

    • "Digital Divide." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. 26 Sep. 2010. Web. 27 Sep. 2010.

    • Payton, Fay Cobb. "Digital Divide." International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Ed. William A. Darity, Jr. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008. 366-368. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 27 Sept. 2010.
• You will be graded on the relevance of the entries you found, your use of the MLA style, and the thoughtfulness of what you tell me about what you learned from each entry.

Task 2

• Complete your own copy of the "LIB 1015--topic development worksheet" and share it with me. You will be graded on the depth and breadth of your answers.

What To Turn In

1. Using Google Docs, share with me your annoated bibliography of the 5 or more encyclopedia entries you found
2. Your own, completed copy of the Google Doc, "LIB 1015--topic development worksheet"

PART 1

Due October 17 (Monday)

Using the topics that you have been working on during the semester, compose a very focused research question and post it to the course blog. The more work that has gone into the wording of your question and into making it specific and precise, the better your grade. Spelling errors and grammatical mistakes will also result in a lower grade.

PART 2

Due October 26 (Wednesday).

Read the research questions that your classmates have posted on the course blog and offer a comment on two different questions that your classmates have posted. Your comment should not be something like, "Nice idea" or "Interesting." Instead, you need to offer some sort of insightful, helpful, and courteous critique of each of the two questions you decide to respond to.

Look at every single word in a question you're reading and ask yourself if each word is precise enough and offers clarity to the question or, instead, serves up vague generalities. In particular, watch out for verbs like "impact" or "affect," as they are typically inadequate terms for clearly relating how one thing acted on or drove another.

Also, ask yourself if the nouns used in the sentence are too broad because they have too many possible meanings or subtexts that the question doesn't consider.

Borrowing ideas about what makes a good research question ais defined in the reading we did by William Badke, here are things you will want to incorporate into your comments:

• Is there really a question there? Does it look like the question is just going to lead the student to pull together a bunch of information that doesn't really answer question but instead merely reports on a topic?
• Is the question too fuzzy or ill-defined? 
• Is the question too broad or too narrow? How do you know this to be true?
• Is the question actually a bunch of separate questions squashed together? (Your research question should just be a single question, not a multi-part question.)
• Does the question have no boundaries in the way it can be answered and is thus too open-ended?
• Is there no real way to answer this question because it is unlikely you can find sources that would back you up? (E.g., "Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe right now?")

Your comments should not be a separate blog posts but instead a comment on a blog post (we'll go over in class how to do this). The more you put into your comments, the better your grade on this. Your comments should offer advice as well as insightful questions.

Due October 24 (Monday)

1. Find five different books in the library that have something to do with your research topic.
2. As we did in class, create a spreadsheet in Google Docs in which have labeled the fields for the data you think is important in your book database.
3. Once you've come up with a set of fields, enter in the data for each of the 5 books you have selected.
4. Share the completed worksheet in Google Docs with me

Due November 7 (Monday)

1. Make your copy of the controlled vocabulary worksheet in Google Docs
2. Follow the instructions on the worksheet
3. Share your version of thew worksheet with me for grading

PART 1

Due November 9 (Wednesday)

Using the topics that you have been working on during the semester, compose a very focused research question and post it to the course blog.

PART 2

Due November 16 (Wednesday).

Read the research questions that your classmates have posted on the course blog and offer a comment on two different questions that your classmates have posted. Your comment should not be something like, "Nice idea" or "Interesting." Instead, you need to offer some sort of insightful, helpful, and courteous critique of each of the two questions you decide to respond to.

Borrowing ideas about what makes a good research question as defined in the reading we did by William Badke, here are things you will want to incorporate into your comments:

• Is there really a question there? Does it look like the question is just going to lead the student to pull together a bunch of information that doesn't really answer question but instead merely reports on a topic?
• Is the question too fuzzy or ill-defined?
• Is the question too broad or too narrow? How do you know this to be true?
• Is the question actually a bunch of separate questions squashed together? (Your research question should just be a single question, not a multi-part question.)
• Does the question have no boundaries in the way it can be answered and is thus too open-ended?
• Is there no real way to answer this question because it is unlikely you can find sources that would back you up? (E.g., "Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe right now?")

Your comments should not be a separate blog posts but instead a comment on a blog post (we'll go over in class how to do this).

Due November 23 (Wednesday)

1. Find a peer-reviewed journal article that relates directly to your topic and research question.
2. Using the biographical information found in the article, try to compile a profile of that author. Use this Google Doc worksheet to complete that profile.

Tips

• Look at the author information on the article to determine any institutional affiliation that the author has.
• Go to the website of the institution where the author works and use the search box on that site to find info on that author.
• If the author is a professor at a university or college, try to find a faculty profile page about him/her.
• Look at the bibliography for the article you've chosen to see if the author cites other articles he/she has written.
• Do author searches in databases to find other articles that the author has written.
• Do author searches in Google Scholar to find other articles the author has written.
• Do author searches in WorldCat to find books that the author has written.

Due December 5 (Monday)

Citations should be done in MLA style. Each annotation will use complete, grammatically correct sentences and MUST include:

• identification of what type of source it is (newspaper article, magazine article, peer-reviewed journal article, other journal article, book, book chapter, encyclopedia entry, etc.)
• review of the main points of the source
• defense of how this source is directly relevant to your research question (the more you can explain the connections between the source and your question, the better)
• explanation of how authoritative this source is (tell me briefly what you know about the author)
• thoughts about how you would use this source (background? exhibit? argument? method?); it is OK if you see using a source in a couple of different ways.