I thought the Thompson Handbook did a good job of bringing up a lot of very valid points for researching topics. Rather than saying not to procrastinate like we hear over and over again, it brought up that you should have a sense of urgency when doing your research. I think it is a common misconception that because you start early, you are going to keep pace. Many people start early but lolly-gag and end up having to cram it all in at the last minute. I think this is where they got the saying “If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.”
Another good tip given was to keep some sort of research log. It seems that on every project I find this magical source that has all the answers, but can never find it again. I have even saved searches before and when I come back, that site doesn’t show up again. This is definitely something I am going to keep track of for this project.
The Thompson Handbook also mentioned using online catalogs available through Purdue. I thought it was very helpful that it broke the catalogs down into their subject matter. The few times I have used these through the libraries, I never know which one to search.
It also mentioned that you must make sure your topic has enough information to be researched. Being that our topic is a fairly new concept, green and sustainable energy, it will most likely drive us to the internet for the majority of our research. There will not be much bound print providing relevant information to be used for our white paper. This will however make using the online journals and catalogs through the Purdue libraries a very helpful source of information. These will contain some of the latest and most innovative products and information available at no cost.
Since we will be doing most of our research online, I paid special attention to the section on validating your sources. Freshman year in English 106 my instructor drilled it into us that we can never believe all the sources we read. With the free reign of the internet, I will have to pay special attention to the sources, and be certain to only use correct and reliable information.
Source R13
I definitely agree with your last statement that “With the free reign of the internet, I will have to pay special attention to the sources, and be certain to only use correct and reliable information.” In my specific situation, I have a product (a wireless D-link router) that I need to research so that it can be compared to other brands of routers. I think it will be easy to pick out the very reliable and very unreliable resources from my research. For instance, manufacturer data should be highly reliable and user reviews would be a source that would need looked in to. I think the gray area will come from reviews and tests from third parties, and spec information given on a non-manufacturer website. As simple as it seemed to pick out where my resources lay, I think I will find many questionable situations once I delve in deeper. That’s why I think the best learning is done by doing.
Shane
Don't wait to do the research..
I also thought that it was interesting how the Thompson Handbook stated that we should a sense of urgency instead of just saying don’t wait until the last second to cram everything in your project. I like your idea about using a research log. That could help bring the user back to a specific source much faster and easier than typing it in through Google and searching for it for an hour. As you stated you will most likely have to use the internet for the bulk of your research because there isn’t a whole lot of hard copy information about “going green”. Since you are doing most of your research on the internet, you need to watch out for those sites that have a bunch of “crap” in terms of information because someone got board and decided to pot information about something they know nothing about.
Wikipedia
We must have had the same English 106 instructor, but more than likely they all did this. Basically, my instructor told us that if we just assumed Wikipedia was correct, she wouldn’t accept our paper. We needed to verify the information with a notable source. One thing I found difficult was finding a site explaining technical information that was easy to understand. I overcame this by ultimately checking these pages to make sure Wikipedia entries were correct. Then I used the language on the Wikipedia website, layman’s terms, to explain the point. In the end, I sited them both and the teacher was satisfied.
Sources
I am not sure that I agree with your statement about not being able to find much "bound print" about green and sustainable energy. Being part of the whole global warming campaignm led by Al Gore, this topic has been extremely hot for the past few years that has gotten much attention from almost everyone in the US. You will find very in depth sources of all types including websites, journal articles, books, press releases, and transcripts of government officials discussing it. So don't worry about finding sources, I think you will find many more than you could possibly use.