Schedule Your Appointment Online:
To schedule a session with a SAW mentor, please make an appointment online.
Drop-In Hours | No Appointment Required
Evenings | Sunday - Thursday: 7pm - 8pm
Mornings | Wednesday - Friday: 10am - 11am
Different research sources are best accessed through various types of databases. For example, books are best located through a library catalog and academic articles are best located in scholarly databases. LITS Tips: Where you search matters!
For example, searching in JSTOR, which is an interdisciplinary database will only bring up articles in JSTOR, so you might be missing a good article in ProjectMuse (another database). These sources are not cross-searchable. Also, you can't search everything with one search box (even Google has limits---check out the deep web page to learn more) so utilizing various research tools will help you with locating the most suitable research materials.
Scholarly journals are also called academic, peer-reviewed or refereed journals. These are journals that academics submit articles to for other scholars, experts or academics peers in the field to review and comment. These reviewers must agree that the article represents properly conducted original research or writing before it can be published.
What to look for:
Examples of scholarly journals:
American Economic Review
Applied Geography
Archives of Sexual Behavior
JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association
Journal of Theoretical Biology
For more information, check out this helpful guide from Cornell University: Distinguishing Scholarly Journals from Other Periodicals.
Primary sources provide first-hand testimony, direct evidence or knowledge concerning a topic under investigation. Some examples:
Secondary sources interpret or conduct analysis on primary sources
LITS Tip: In the sciences, a primary source is the published result of experimental or observational research.
Image Credit: https://twitter.com/mhcsaw
Located on the main level of Dwight in the Mediated Educational Work Space (MEWS), the SAW Center is a place where students work together with SAW Mentors who are trained to assist students with essays, lab reports, creative writing, presentations, speeches, senior theses, reflection responses, personal statements, analytical papers, and more. While SAW Center mentors help with speaking, arguing, and writing, LITS Liaisons help with locating research materials, citing and finding sources, using bibliographic software such as Zotero, and talking through your research ideas/topics.
SAW Center Hours
Monday and Tuesday: 3pm - 9pm
Wednesday and Thursday: 9am -12pm and 3pm - 9pm
Friday: 9am -12pm
Sunday: 12pm - 9pm
Schedule Your Appointment Online:
To schedule a session with a SAW mentor, please make an appointment online.
Drop-In Hours | No Appointment Required
Evenings | Sunday - Thursday: 7pm - 8pm
Mornings | Wednesday - Friday: 10am - 11am
In preparation for your research, address the following four points:
1) The topic you would like to research
2) Why you are interested in this topic
3) How the topic connects to World Regional Geography
4) Full citations for three sources that you intend to use in your paper.
"An annotated outline includes the bullet points for the main topic you plan to explore in each paragraph and the evidence you intend to use to substantiate your argument. It also includes a short narrative summary for each paragraph that describes in more depth what you anticipate writing about in each paragraph. An annotated outline should include your working thesis statement as well. You need to know what you plan to argue, what evidence and sources you will use to support your points, and the order in which you intend to build your case.
Writing An Annotated Bibliography:This link offers information on how to construct an annotated bibliography from Cornell University.