Accelerated Rhetoric
010:003
Bridget Draxler, Instructor
Brett Cloyd, Reference Librarian (brett-cloyd@uiowa.edu)
Presented February 25, 2008
See also Resources for Rhetoric Students
- Defining your topic
CQ Researcher 
– suggested resource. Background reading
- Provides a good degree of background information to help you better understand a topic.
- Searching or using the Browse By Topic feature should lead to possible articles.
- CQ Researcher Articles include a list of relevant resources on the topic, charts, statistics, and in most cases, an essay from experts who have differing views on a topic.
- For class, students will discover one CQ Researcher article on their topic of interest.
- Each CQ Researcher article has a bibliography. You will use this bibliography to complete class exercises. Keep the CQ Researcher window open once finished.
- InfoHawk Catalog. This is the on-line catalog that describes books, journal and magazine holdings, government documents, videos, and reference sources.
- The class goal is identify 1-2 books which you will locate in the Main Library. If you cannot find the books listed in your CQ Researcher article, try finding other books on your topic. Write down the call number and location. Once finished in 4037, you will locate these on the shelves.
- Articles. Finding articles can be more difficult. Students will take a couple approaches by searching for the "articles" listed in the CQ Researcher bibliography.
- Use SmartSearch (Libraries' home page) to search for the name of the publication in which the article is published (i.e. New York Times, Economist, Lancet).
- This approach does not let you search for the article itself, so you will need to perform a second search once you've found the publication.
- Many of the current news magazines (i.e. Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report are held by the Main Library and located on the third floor, Journal and Magazines section. You might want to look for articles published in these publications when reviewing the CQ Researcher bibliography).
- Goal of this section is to find one article in on-line full-text environment, and two articles you can track down in the Libraries' 3rd floor holdings.
- If you cannot find your articles by utilizing the Libraries' Smart Search screen, you might try using some of the databases listed in the next section.
- Places where you might search for articles, or places you might like to initiate your search.
- Evaluate information and its sources critically and incorporate selected information into your knowledge base and value system. Here are some sample activities to consider in addition to your assignment:
- Summarize the main ideas to be extracted from the information gathered.
- Articulate and apply initial criteria for evaluating both the information and its sources. Evaluate reliability, validity, accuracy, authority, timeliness, and point of view or bias
- Magazine vs. scholarly journal page might be useful to consult
- Do you need to reformulate your search strategy or topic?
- Effectively use information to accomplish a specific purpose.
- Organize your search process so you can best complete your assignment.
- Keep track of articles you have read, the search terms you have used, and your responses to the source material
- RefWorks is a tool used to manage citations and create a bibliography. It might be helpful for you to use this as a way to keep track of what you have looked at. Citations from many databases, including InfoHawk Catalog, CQ Researcher, and ASE can easily be exported to RefWorks.You can also share your citations with others. I am sharing some citations on marriage.
- Understand many of the ethical, legal and socio-economic issues surrounding information and information technology.
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