I hope that you learned a lot from our research librarians. As you can see, the CSUF librarians are very busy, but they love to help students work on their research projects. You will have to write many important research papers during your time at an American university. The more you learn now, the less you'll have to worry later!
Prompt: In the university, professors often require you to submit an "Annotated Bibliography" before you start working on your research paper. This bibliography helps the professor know whether or not you are going in the right direction for your research.
Step 1) Use one of the databases that we learned about in the library. You may use a popular (newspaper/magazine) OR scholarly database. Find at least ONE article.
Step 2) Read or skim through the article.
Step 3) In this journal entry, tell us where you found the article and who wrote it. Later on we will learn how to "document" the source using the APA style. If you want, you can try to do that now.
Step 4) Give me a paragraph summary of how you might use this source. This is sometimes called an annotated bibliography. You should include the following information: Who is the author? Will this help you answer your research question or give you a background on your topic? How?
For example, here is a annotation from the annotated bibliography I wrote for a research paper I wrote on place names in English.
Angus, D. (2005). Place name morphology and the people of Los Angeles. California Linguistic Notes. 30 (2). Retrieved from http://hss.fullerton.edu/linguistics/cln
Duncan Angus is a linguistics professor at CSUF. He noticed that while many people used the word Angeleno to refer to people from Los Angeles, not everyone did. It made him wonder what the most common form was. In this article Angus discusses the results of his survey. This was useful for me because this is what made me interested in the topic of place name morphology in English. I will conduct my own survey and compared my answers with Angus's. I want to find out if most people who live here in Orange County use Angeleno or something else.
Get ready for research!
