Choose Your Own Research Adventure

Congratulations, you have just begun your first semester as a college student. In one of your classes your professor has assigned a research project on a current or controversial topic. Your assignment requires you to utilize a variety of resources including books, journal articles, digital media, and websites. How you proceed through your research is up to you. What steps do you take and where will they lead? Start with [[Chapter 1: Choosing a Topic]] to find out. <br><div><img border="0" src="https://sites.google.com/a/miamioh.edu/choose-your-own-research-adventure/home/dangerous.JPG" style="display:block;margin-right:auto;margin-left:auto;text-align:center"></div>

Broad Wikipedia Search: You type in marijuana and your search brings up the the page for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana" target="_new">cannabis</a>. You realize that the page covers a multitude of themes covering marijuana, from its effects to history of the plant to consumption. You realize if you try to complete your project without narrowing your topic that your assignment will take longer to find related and specific information. At this rate your project may never be finished. <div> <div style="display:block;text-align:left"><img border="0" height="293" src="https://sites.google.com/a/miamioh.edu/choose-your-own-research-adventure/home/chapter-1-choosing-a-topic/search-for-marijuana/broad-wikipedia-search/wikipedia%20can.JPG" width="400"></div>

Broad Background Information Search: You choose to look at Gale Virtual Reference Library for more information on your topic. Gale includes a large number of encyclopedias and reference books on various topics. You type in marijuana and your search brings up over reference sources that discuss your topic, including medical, legal and religious encyclopedias. Instead of going through every encyclopedia listed, you decide that narrowing down your topic could help you limit your search results.

Chapter 2: Finding Background Information You begin your search by looking for an overview of your topic. You know that dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks, and other reference sources can provide the historical, cultural, and disciplinary context of your topic and that there are different online ones from which to choose. Do you search for your topic in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page" target="_new">Wikipedia</a> or by using one of the sources under the <a href="http://www.mid.miamioh.edu/library/reference.htm" target="_new">Reference (Background Information)</a> link on the library website which your university librarian first introduced to you? [[Use Wikipedia]] [[Use Reference(Background Information)]]

You chose to narrow down your topic. You begin by making a list of related search terms. Topic: Marijuana <div><br> <img border="0" src="https://sites.google.com/a/miamioh.edu/choose-your-own-research-adventure/home/chapter-1-choosing-a-topic/narrow-down-your-search/drug%20chart.JPG"></div> Looking at all the terms you identified, you realize that you can narrow down or focus your topic a little or a lot. But how far should you really narrow down? You narrow down to [[Legalization of Marijuana in the United States]] You narrow down to [[Legalization of Marijuana in Colorado and How it Has Affected Jail Terms in the State]]

After hearing about the recent legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington, you have decided to use marijuana as your research topic. Do you begin searching for the term marijuana or do you try to narrow down your search? [[Search for marijuana]] [[Narrow down your search]]

Chapter 2: Finding Background Information You begin your search by looking for an overview of your topic. You know that dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks, and other reference sources can provide the historical, cultural, and disciplinary context of your topic and that there are different online ones from which to choose. Do you search for your topic in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page" target="_new">Wikipedia</a> or by using one of the sources under the <a href="http://www.mid.miamioh.edu/library/reference.htm" target="_new">Reference (Background Information)</a> link on the library website which your university librarian first introduced to you? Use [[Wikipedia]] Use [[Reference(Background Information)]]

Chapter 2: Finding Background Information You begin your search by looking for an overview of your topic. You know that dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks, and other reference sources can provide the historical, cultural, and disciplinary context of your topic and that there are different online ones from which to choose. Do you search for your topic in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page" target="_new">Wikipedia</a> or by using one of the sources under the <a href="http://www.mid.miamioh.edu/library/reference.htm" target="_new">Reference (Background Information)</a> link on the library website which your university librarian first introduced to you? Use [[Narrowed Wikipedia]] Use [[Narrowed Reference (Background Information)]]

You search for Legalization of Marijuana in the United States and are presented with different topic suggestions. You choose to look at Legal History of Cannabis in the United States which provides a history of criminalization and reform efforts. While useful, you also realize that all of the information contained in the encyclopedia article come from other sources which should be double checked for accuracy as Wikipedia can be updated by the public. Wikipedia should not be used as a cited source in your research project, however its citations could lead you to other useful sources. Now that you have an idea of what your topic is about, you decide to look for books. Of course, if you want to look for more background information, you can check out the References (Background Information) page from the library as well. <div> <div style="display:block;text-align:left"><img border="0" src="https://sites.google.com/a/miamioh.edu/choose-your-own-research-adventure/home/chapter-2-finding-background-information/wikipedia/wikipedia%20leaglization%20search.JPG"></div> <div style="display:block;text-align:left"><br> </div> Go to [[Finding Books]] Go to [[Reference(Background Information)]]

Under the Reference (Background Information) link, you choose to look at Opposing Viewpoints in Context as it covers current and controversial topics. You remember that you can browse their major issues and find links to drug legalization, marijuana, and medical marijuana as issues that could be useful to look at drug legalization. You choose to look at Drug Legalization and are presented with reference sources, websites, articles, and more covering both those who are for and those who are against legalization of marijuana. All of the sources listed include citation information and the majority may be used as cited sources in you research. Now that you have an idea of what your topic is about, you decide that you can either move on to books, or go to Wikipedia for more background information. <div> <div style="display:block;text-align:left"><img src="https://sites.google.com/a/miamioh.edu/choose-your-own-research-adventure/home/chapter-2-finding-background-information/reference-background-information/reference background marijuana.JPG" border="0"></div> Go to [[Finding Books]] Search [[Wikipedia]]

Chapter 3: Finding Books Now that you have more background information about your topic, you decide to find books to help you expand on your knowledge. You know the library has a collection of books both in the building and online, but you are also comfortable searching for books through Google, your go-to search engine. Do you utilize the library catalog or go with your familiar friend Google? Go to [[Library Catalog]] Go to [[Google]]

Library Catalog You go to the library homepage and search for <b>Legalization of Marijuana and the United States</b> under the Books & More tab. Your results include e-books, electronic resources, and print books that can be found on the regional campuses and Oxford. They include books covering a variety of viewpoints on legalization and the uses of marijuana. Each record also includes the citation for the item and related subject terms. You are easily able to locate books that are useful for your project. You also see that you can request books from any of the campuses to be delivered to you here in Middletown. <div><div style="display:block;text-align:left"><img border="0" src="https://sites.google.com/a/miamioh.edu/choose-your-own-research-adventure/home/chapter-3-finding-books/library-catalog/Book%20search%20marijuana.JPG"></div> Now that you have found books, you decide to look for articles. Go to [[Finding Articles]]

Google for Books You go to Google.com and search for <b>legalization of marijuana united states books</b> as you know you want to focus your results. You leave out the <b>and</b> when searching for your terms as Google automatically looks for each word listed and and is not needed. You find over a million results for books, mostly connected to books for sale at Amazon.com and reviews for books from different websites. However, the further you go into your results, the fewer book related results you find. While Amazon links and reviews can help you decide if a book is useful, it will not give you access to the item. You decide to go back and search the catalog to find books you can access both online and physically. <div><div style="display:block;text-align:left"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://sites.google.com/a/miamioh.edu/choose-your-own-research-adventure/home/chapter-3-finding-books/google-for-books/books.JPG" width="380"></div>

You search Wikipedia for <b>legalization of marijuana and Colorado and jail terms</b> to support your narrowed topic of Legalization of Marijuana in Colorado and How it Has Affected Jail Terms in the State. There are no pages that fit all of your search terms. The closest result is a page that references the legality of cannabis, but no mention of jail terms changing based on legalization. You quickly realize that you may have narrowed your results too much and decide to go back and search the broader topic of <b>legalization of marijuana in the United States</b>.

You go to Reference (Background Information) and choose to look at Opposing Viewpoints in Context. You remember that you can browse their major issues and find links to drug legalization, marijuana, and medical marijuana as issues that could be useful to your search. You do not see any resources that specifically focus on all the elements of your search and realize that you may need to broaden your topic. You decide to go back and search for <b>legalization of marijuana in the United States</b>.

Chapter 4: Finding Articles Now that you have found and requested the books you would like to read on your topic, you begin searching for articles. You decide to start with a broad search to see what is available. You go to the library homepage and search for <b>legalization of marijuana</b> under the Articles and More tab. Your results include not just journal articles, but also a variety of other sources, including newspapers, magazines, reports, and books. From previous searches you know that the word cannabis is also used and decide to use the Boolean operator "or" to help search for both terms. To help focus your results, you utilize the Refine Your Results limiter options on the menu to the left. You decide to first limit by the type of items. You are allowed to use both scholarly and popular journals as both have their merits. <div><div style="display: block; text-align: left;"><img src="https://sites.google.com/a/miamioh.edu/choose-your-own-research-adventure/home/chapter-4-finding-articles/Articles and more marijuana.JPG" border="0"></a></div> Go to [[Scholarly Article Search]] Go to [[Popular Article Search]]

To limit your results to scholarly journal articles, you check the 'Limit to Peer Reviewed Journals' box. You choose to limit your results further by geographic region and select the 'United States' as that is part of your topic. As your number of results go from the thousands to the hundreds, you choose to narrow down your results even more by adjusting the Publication Date Range. As a current topic, you decide to look at the last 5 years of publications. With the total number of results now being under 50, you begin to look at the individual articles, downloading the PDFs and citations of those you find the most relevant. With your scholarly articles in hand, you can search for popular articles, or move on to see what types of digital media exists on your topic. Go to [[Popular Article Search]] Go to [[Digital Media]] For more help <a href="http://www.mid.miamioh.edu/library/Finding%20Scholarly%20Sources.pdf" target="_new">Finding Scholarly Sources Handout</a>

To limit your results to popular journal articles and newspapers, you check the 'News' and 'Magazine' boxes under the Material Types. You choose to limit your results further by geographic region and select the 'United States' as that is part of your topic. As your number of results go from the thousands to the hundreds to less than one hundred, you choose to narrow down your results even more by adjusting the Publication Date Range. As a current topic, you decide to look at the last 5 years of publications. As newspapers and popular journals are published more frequently than scholarly journals, you maintain a higher number of results as you go through your limiters. You can continue to use more limiter options to narrow down your results, or you can choose to look at the subject terms associated with one of the articles you find useful to locate more articles associated with that topic. The number of limiters or subject terms searches you complete is up to you. Remember, you can download or email the citations and PDFs of the articles you find useful. With your popular articles in hand, you can search for scholarly articles, or move on to see what types of digital media exists on your topic. Go to [[Scholarly Article Search]] Go to [[Digital Media]]

Chapter 5: Finding Digital Media Digital Media most commonly covers images, video, and music. For your topic, you decide to look for current videos and images that may help enrich you project. Search for [[Videos]] Search for [[Images]]

You remember that Opposing Viewpoints has videos from different news sources and that each of the listed videos contain a summary and source citation and can be downloaded for use with your project. You once again check the 'Drug Legalization' page to view the videos. Aside from Opposing Viewpoints, you also decide to search <a href="http://www.youtube.com/" target="_new">YouTube</a>, as that is your favorite source for online videos. Go to [[YouTube]] <div><font size="3">*For more help finding videos check out our <a href="http://libguides.lib.miamioh.edu/visual" target="_new">Images and Video LibGuide</a></font></div>

Your professor was very clear that while images found online can be used in your project, <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/" target="_new">Creative Commons</a> (CC) images would be best so you can avoid any copyright concerns. You frequently search for images in Google and Flickr and wonder if there is a Creative Commons search option for both of them. When you search Google, you find that <a href="https://images.google.com/" target="_new">Google Images</a> allows you to limit your results by usage rights (under Search Tools), so you can limit to images that can be reused. Within Flickr, you find that there is a whole <a href="https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/" target="_new">Creative Commons section</a> section that assures your search results will be licensed for reuse. While locating CC images is easier than you thought, you still need to evaluate the usefulness of the image in relation to your research. Continue Research with [[Videos]] Move on to [[Web Resources]] <div><span style="font-size:medium">*For more help finding videos check out our </span><a href="http://libguides.lib.miamioh.edu/visual" style="font-size:medium" target="_new">Images and Video LibGuide</a></div>

You search for <b>legalization of marijuana and United States</b> and get over 80,000 results. The results include videos from news broadcasts, personal videos and opinion pieces from different organizations. You quickly realize that you will need to evaluate any video you choose to use based on authority, accuracy, and purpose before you can use it for your project. Continue Research with [[Images]] Move on to [[Web Resources]]

Chapter 6: Evaluating Web Resources Now that you have completed your search for images and videos online, you decide to look at the last type of source on your list, websites. To begin searching for websites you first choose which search engine you prefer, in this case you choose Google. You type in <b>legalization of marijuana and United States</b> and get millions of results. Some are from organizations, some are news sources, some are from commercial sites, some are from government sites, and some are from reference sources, such as online encyclopedias. You know you can limit your results in Google by using the Advanced Search option under the gear icon if desired. You also know that you can focus your results just to government websites by searching <a href="http://www.usa.gov/" target="_new">usa.gov</a>. For now, you choose to stick with your Google results. As you have already looked at Wikipedia, you decide to check out a few of the other listed results. You scroll through the firs page of results and select the website you think will be useful based on the title and description listed, just as you would when looking at journal articles or books. For each result you choose to look at, you know you need to evaluate the source before using it in your research. You seem to remember something about CRAAP helping you out. [[Evaluate with CRAAP]]

CRAAP stands for Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose. When using a website it is important to know when it was published or had information added. Let's take a look at how each of these characteristics impact information on websites. Currency relates to the age of information found online, or how up to date it is. Depending on the topic you are working on, currency may not be an essential component: that is, if you are researching historical topics such as the U.S. Civil War, sites last updated in 1999 are not necessarily worse than sites updated last month. However, for issues and topics that experience ongoing change or that would be helped by more current statistics or analysis, such as legalization of marijuana, it's worth paying attention to when a web site was last updated. We can think about the Relevance of a site in terms of whether or not the information provided on it helps answer your research question. Is the information written in language that only experts in the field would understand? Is it meant for someone who is new to the topic? Does it actually contain information that advances your knowledge on the topic (or is it just restating the same information you already have)? In order to ensure relevance, you will likely need to look at a variety of sources and sites. But you also want to be pretty clear on what question or questions you're asking so that you can tell how relevant the site is. Authority is all about whether or not we can trust the person or the organization who provides us with the information. What do they know about this topic? Or, why should you trust them to give you information on the topic? Do you have any idea of the credentials the author has or what organization she or he is affiliated with? Accuracy is the question of how you can test the information you've found. Is the information factual? Where did it come from? Could you find this same information elsewhere to verify it? The final characteristic is Purpose. Why did someone take the time to create this information? Is the information designed to inform you about something, or sell you something, or entertain you? Is it presented as opinion, or an objective and impartial study of the topic, or is it propaganda intended to persuade you about the topic? Are the intentions of the author made clear in the document? You cannot avoid information that is biased or comes from a certain perspective. But you want to be aware of where the page is coming from before you use it as a source in your paper or project. Let's try looking at all of these points for the website: <a href="http://NORML.org" target="_new">NORML.org</a> <img src="https://sites.google.com/a/miamioh.edu/choose-your-own-research-adventure/home/chapter-6-evaluating-web-resources/evaluate-with-craap/CRAAP marijuana.JPG" border="0"> Their About Us page states: "NORML's mission is to move public opinion sufficiently to legalize the responsible use of marijuana by adults, and to serve as an advocate for consumers to assure they have access to high quality marijuana that is safe, convenient and affordable." With your website choice now evaluated, it is time to gather all of your research together. Move on to [[Citing Sources]] *For more information on using the CRAAP test, check out the <a href="https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cIhbFjVt8J" target="_new">video</a> below: <iframe width=640 height=382 frameborder="0" scrolling="no" src="//screencast-o-matic.com/embed?sc=cIhbFjVt8J&w=640&v=3"></iframe>

Chapter 7: Citing Sources Is it really necessary to cite every source that you reference within your project? What if you only use a bit of a paragraph from one book? Most of the information seems obvious and might be common knowledge, so maybe you don't have to cite it? With your books, articles, digital media, and website sources combined, do you have to list all of them? [[Cite All Your Sources]] [[Cite Some of Your Sources]]

If you have pulled quotations, paraphrased information, or used facts from a source, it is important to cite it within the text and in your bibliography. For books and articles, the citations can often be copied directly from the catalog or database for the individual record. For digital media and websites, online citation tools can be used to help build your citations. Remember to always double check any copied citations to ensure all the correct fields are complete. [[Completing the Journey]] *For more help with building citations, check out our <a href="http://www.mid.muohio.edu/library/citingsources.htm" target="_new">Citing Sources</a> page and <a href="http://libguides.lib.miamioh.edu/MLA_citation_guide" target="_new">MLA</a> and <a href="http://libguides.lib.miamioh.edu/APA_citation_guide" target="_new">APA</a>Guides.

If you choose not to cite sources from which you have pulled quotations, paraphrased information, or used facts, you can be charged with <a href="http://libguides.lib.miamioh.edu/plagiarism" target="_new">plagiarism</a>. Plagiarizing material can result in failing your assignment, failing your course, or facing disciplinary action with the university. <a href="http://Plagiarism.org" target="_new">Plagiarism.org</a> helps you decipher the <a href="http://www.plagiarism.org/plagiarism-101/types-of-plagiarism" target="_new">10 types of plagiarism</a> that can affect all of us. Once you know the types, you can avoid them. Knowing you need to cite all your sources correctly, you decide to look at how to cite them.

Well done! You have survived the Research Process! You have located and evaluated your sources and your citations are clearly written and included as needed. Now go forth and take your research skills on new and exciting adventures as you complete work in other university classes and beyond! <img border="0" src="https://sites.google.com/a/miamioh.edu/choose-your-own-research-adventure/home/chapter-7-citing-sources/cite-all/completing-the-journey/library%20survivor.png" style="display:block;margin-right:auto;text-align:middle">