Research Help

Concept mapping involves brainstorming and organizing the key terms and ideas pertaining to and connecting your research interests. This process may involve:

• Using visualization techniques to engage in the process of exploring ideas, concepts, knowledge, and creative output in your discipline

• Exploring existing frameworks and theoretical lenses to make meaning and contextualize your creative/research project

• Mapping out the elements that relate to your creative practice, interests, and experience

  • What medium(s) are you using?

  • What art/design/social movements are you inspired by/part of?

  • What theoretical concepts/theorists inform your work?

  • What social context are you working within/impacted by?

  • What artists/designers/theorists are working with similar concepts? Whose work inspires/moves you?

  • What lived experiences and expertise do you already have that connect to these concepts?

Using your concept map we will work together to create search terms and phrases to use in database searches. To prepare you for the research process we will identify search concepts and techniques, and information sources and material types in your preferred formats that are relevant to your research. This will provide a checklist for you to systematically record your research strategies.

The search strategy may include the following elements:

• Key research topics from your concept map

• Synonyms and alternate search terms

• Search phrases using Boolean operators, “phrase searching”, truncation*, and wild cards # ?

• Controlled vocabularies (subject headings, thesauri and taxonomies)

• Limiters such as time period, geographical region, language, format, etc.

Using the ECU Library search tools, we will begin searching for resources. We will look through the database list from the library website (www.ecuad.ca/library), try your search terms in a few discipline specific databases, and analyze your search results. We will identify subject terms, or cited texts that emerge in relevant search results.

Each article database will have different coverage of a variety of journals. We will browse through the content of some scholarly journals from your discipline and see if there are any volumes or special issues that focus on your topic. Additionally we may explore:

• How to identify the scope of the databases and view the publications they provide access to.

• Examine bibliographic information to determine if it is relevant to your topic and adjust your search strategy. We will look at:

  • Publication date: do you require the most current information (not always necessary)

  • Broader source: is it a chapter in a book? Article in a journal or newspaper? Can we find any other relevant resources in the same book or journal?

  • Authorship: explore the author’s affiliations, experience, expertise, body of work and their relationship to the subject.

  • Summary: Look at the abstract to determine what the source is about. What is the author’s argument?

Learn where or how to get full access to the resources in the library or resources we provide access to including books, ebooks, streaming videos, articles, journals, images and more. Discover what technology is needed for access, how to get the resource through the library databases or access from another library. Learn how to request items for purchase or fill out an interlibrary loan to borrow from other libraries. Explore ways of searching beyond the ECU library databases and Google.

Learn how do you determine the usefulness or credibility of a resource in relation to your research question? We will consider the following questions:

• What do the different types of authority look like in your particular context or community of practice?

• What happens when one perspective is promoted and others are left unexpressed within your field?

• How do you critique persuasive, incomplete, prejudiced, or manipulative information, including images, text, and other creative media?

• What are your informed parameters and guidelines for determining authority within your discipline and practice?

Learn how to use citation management tools like Zotero, which is a free and easy to use tool for quickly documenting your research from the library catalogue, article databases, websites, blogs, images, videos, PDFs and really anything else. Zotero allows you to link your documented research sources with the work that you do in Microsoft Word, Open Office or Google Docs and it works right within your browser.