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Introduction
| | To
prepare position papers, you must do research. You can do
research
in the library or over the internet. As a starting point for library
research, consult
the
bibliography we have prepared on the issues addressed in this
class. If you would like to learn a bit more about finding published
materials, please try the Bobst tutorials on finding articles and finding
books. The remainder of this page concerns research over the
internet. | |
Internet research tools take varied
forms. The most
valuable for us are
two types: tools for finding printed materials (some let you read the
materials over the internet, others provide only the citations), and
tools for finding internet (or web) documents. Both are valuable, but
it is easier to find authoritative, convincing work through the printed
material than through material published directly over the internet
(see Evaluating Information).
To
be effective, both require that you understand how the search process
works. Whenever you begin to use a new search tool,
you should take the time to read carefully its help descriptions on how
to do searches. | |
The last section below lists
general guides to research on the internet. Anyone with limited
internet research experience should start with these. Pay particular
attention to the skills needed to design effective research queries and
the techniques for deciding the value and dependability of information
you find. Even if you have considerable experience, you would be wise
to take a look at these guides, because you are likely to learn
something useful. | |
(To ensure that you use the
full range of research possibilities, each paper must cite minimums
of five printed sources, five internet sources, and ten sources
overall.
Normally, a paper's citations will exceed these limits, and a strong
paper will likely exceed them by quite a lot. Note that
materials
originally published in printed journals are considered printed sources
even if they are found and read over the internet, so they contribute
to the minimums for both printed and internet sources.) |
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Note: NYU purchases campus-wide licenses
to
many
databases used
for research. In general, if you want to access any of these databases
from off campus, the links will automatically pop up a window
requesting your NYU NetID and password, than grant you access.
If for any reason this does not occur, you can click
here and follow the
instructions to make your remote connection appear to be through NYU.
Many databases now use the SFX or OpenURL
links with NYU
so that you can easily receive information about the availability
of an article online (or in the library). Whenever you see an
icon  ,
you can click it to find out how you can get
the article. For more information, see the NYU Bobst information
on SFX. |
 Proquest
via Bobst Library Databases -- A
database
for searching a fairly wide range of periodicals, including newspapers,
popular magazines, and academic journals. Some of these have the full
text available "on line," while others have only the abstracts. This
site has a tremendous amount of valuable material--if you cannot find
anything, you probably need to improve your query. It is a good idea to
read carefully through the entire help guide; context relevant help
is available
throughout. Usually, you will want to check the box to "limit results"
to "scholarly journals, including peer-reviewed;" this will avoid you
having to wade through all the articles in newspapers and popular
magazines. Note that you can (and usually should) use
boolean logic to focus your searches and that you can search the full
text of materials. The strength of this database comes from the
wide
coverage and excellent search tools. The principle weakness is
that it does not (at the time of this writing) give SFX links to
discover full text sources if it does not offer the full text. |
| Wilson
Web via Bobst Library Databases --
Wilson Web is
a wide-ranging database like ProQuest and most of the same comments
apply. You usually should not restrict searches to "peer
reviewed" because they will erroneously omit many scholarly journals
they have misidentified. The coverage and search facilities of
Wilson Web are a bit weaker than ProQuest, but they have the
considerable advantage of providing SFX links for all articles. |
| JSTOR via The Bobst Library at NYU:
Databases
-- JSTOR
contains the full-text, completely
searchable, archives of many scholarly journals. The archives stretch
back to each journal's origin and up to several years from
the present. This is a terrific place to find relevant scholarly
research. Its main limitations are that it still omits some important
publications and, by policy, it omits work published in the past
few years. Be sure to look at the search hints. |
| Bobst Library at NYU: Social Sciences
Databases
-- The
full range of social science databases available by
various means through Bobst. The large number of databases available
will be a bit daunting to most people, so you
may want to seek help from a librarian. |
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To find information on the Internet, the best
starting point is
usually one or more of the general search tools. These search for
Internet documents that match the criteria you specify, using an
indexed database of web page titles, contents, and the like. The result
is a list of links that will connect you to Internet documents and,
usually, some information to help you recognize which of these links
are worth pursuing. The indexes and search engines vary considerably.
Generally, for well-known topics, your first level search is aimed at
discovering Internet sites devoted to the issue; they will commonly
contain a list of links to other documents on the topic, which will
also include further links, and so on. If you are not familiar with
these search tools, you would be wise to first consult the tutorial
sites listed in the next section. |
| Google --
Currently the
most popular web search
engine and a good place to start. It has exceptional breadth of
coverage and uses a fairly effective algorithm for ranking the
relevance and importance of web pages. Take the time to read the advice
for basic
and advanced
searching and how to interpret
results
to get the most out of it. | | All
the Web -- Another outstanding
search
engine.
Claims to have best coverage of recent news. |
| Yahoo --
Good basic search engine, with many
classified, human-selected links (click the "Directory" tab). (The
unclassified links are derived
from Google and will replicate what you find there..) |
| Teoma --
Interesting
newer search engine that
uses some distinctive technology to find useful links, which can be
highly effective. | | HotBot --
Another
well-designed and flexible
general search engine, easy to use,
flexible output. Findings somewhat reflect "popularity" of sites. |
| AltaVista
-- One
of the oldest search engines, still
valuable for
sophisticated searches by experienced users. |
| MetaCrawler
-- This is a "metasearch" site, meaning
that it will conduct
the
search you request across a number of search engines, including those
above.
Good for finding basic sites, a bit tricky to control. |
| SurfWax
-- This
is a new "metasearch" site for
conducting a
search request across a number of search engines. It introduces some
interesting
twists to searches which you might find useful. |
| Search
Links at Search Engine Watch -- If
the
search engines above are not
enough, start here in your search for others. |
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These
sites will provide a variety of general results
from
opinion polls. Specialized polls directed at specific topics are more
likely to be found among the sites dedicated to the topic. Even more
information is available through printed sources and
directly from survey data sets. |
| National
Council on Public Polls -- Not a
source of poll results, but an exceptional checklist of the questions
one should ask about any poll when trying to gage its validity,
accuracy, appropriateness, and possible sources of bias. It is a good
idea to read this before looking at any poll data, then reread it
occasionally. | | Public
Agenda Online: Public Policy Research
-- A
substantial effort to provide
nonpartisan information on public policy
and public opinion about a series of important social issues, including
good discussions of ways that polls can be misleading about each issue. |
 Washington Post Poll Vault
&
Political Polls
-- Windows (note: two
different pages) into a considerable supply of poll data gather by the
Washington Post. | | Joint
Center for Political and Economic Studies
-- In
their words, "The Joint Center for
Political and Economic Studies is a
national, nonprofit institution that conducts research on public policy
issues of special concern to African Americans and other communities of
color."
(Or, a couple years ago "to black Americans and other minorities." |
| General Social Survey (at ICPSR)
-- The
"General Social Survey" is a sociological survey that has been given
annually or semiannually since 1972. It covers a range of
material important to social scientists, repeats many questions over
the years, and is considered to be of the highest possible
quality. This site provides summaries of many items, lets you
search for different kinds of questions, and lets you produce tables in
many forms. It takes some work, but allows you to look directly
at the data when it is valuable (for example, if you wanted to know the
relationship between attitudes on something like capital punishment and
religion but could not find it anywhere, you could derive it here). |
| Odum Institute (North Carolina University)
Public
Opinion Poll Question Database --
Lets you
search for poll results using
key words referring to the text
of the questions asked. | | The
Gallup Organization -- Varied poll
data,
both recent and over
time, from the renown opinion
research firm. | |
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