THEATER 122: African Theater and Performance

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Jason M. Schultz
Office Hours: By appointment or Wednesdays 1:30pm-2:30pm, 675A Barrows
Office Location: 438 Doe Library
Contact Info:

(510) 984-3012

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Research Advisory Service

Research Advisory Service for Cal Undergraduates

Book a 30-minute appointment with a librarian who will help refine and focus research inquiries, identify useful online and print sources, and develop search strategies for humanities and social sciences topics (examples of research topics).

Schedule, view, edit or cancel your appointment online (CalNetID required)

This service is for Cal undergraduates only. Graduate students and faculty should contact the library liaison to their department or program for specialized reference consultations.

What is Peer Review?

Your instructor may want you to use "peer reviewed" articles as sources for your paper. Or you may be asked to find picture of thinking student "academic," "scholarly," or "refereed" articles. What do these terms mean?

Let's start with the terms academic and scholarly, which are synonyms. An academic or scholarly journal is one intended for a specialized or expert audience. Journals like this exist in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Examples include Nature, Journal of Sociology, and Journal of American Studies. Scholarly/academic journals exist to help scholars communicate their latest research and ideas to each other; they are written "by experts for experts."

Most scholarly/academic journals are peer reviewed; another synonym for peer reviewed is refereed. Before an article is published in a peer-reviewed journal, it's evaluated for quality and significance by several specialists in the same field, who are "peers" of the author. The article may go through several revisions before it finally reaches publication.

Magazines like Time or Scientific American, newspapers, (most) books, government documents, and websites are not peer-reviewed, though they may be thoroughly edited and fact-checked. Articles in scholarly journals (in printed format or online) usually ARE peer-reviewed.

How can you tell if an article is both scholarly and peer-reviewed?

Is it scholarly? Look at the article:

Is the article about a very specialized topic? Is it written for a knowledgeable, expert audience, or does it seem to be written for the beginner or general public?

Does the article have an abstract or summary at the beginning? Are there footnotes or endnotes? Is there a list of references?

Does the article present the author's original research?

Is it peer-reviewed? Look at the journal:

What journal was the article published in? Look on the journal's website (or inside the front cover of a printed copy) for a description of the journal. Is it described as "peer-reviewed" or "refereed"?

Try looking up the journal's title in ulrichsweb.com (an online database of information about magazines and journals). If it's a peer-reviewed source, a referee's jersey icon will be shown next to the title: refereed icon

If you're still not sure, ask your instructor or a librarian.

Want to learn more? Watch a tutorial about identifying peer-reviewed sources on the Web.

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Library Workshop: Research 101

Unsure how to start a paper or research project? Think maybe you could stand to brush up o student with laptop n search strategies?

If this sounds familiar, Library Workshop: Research 101 has you covered. This interactive tutorial explores six stages of the research process. You can view it from start to finish, or focus on specific sections as needed:

1: Begin Your Research

Starting strategies, from choosing a topic to finding the right keywords.

2: Knowledge CycleThe publication timeline, scholarly vs. popular sources, and differences in academic disciplines.3: Finding BooksSearch for books and other items in OskiCat, Cal's local library catalog.4: Finding ArticlesLocate and access articles in library research databases.5: Make CitationsHow to cite your sources correctly.6: Basic SearchCommon techniques for constructing searches that yield useful results.7: Advanced SearchSpecialized search strategies for targeting specific topics.

Using Boolean Operators & Truncation

BOOLEAN OPERATORS

AND, OR, NOT, W/# (for within or nearby a certain number or words in the full-text)

Example: Migration AND African Americans
Ex: African Americans OR Blacks
Ex: African American NOT African
Ex: Randall Robinson W/10 Reparations

TRUNCATED SEARCHES

Most catalogs & databases use *, ?, # symbols to truncate (shorten) words
Be careful not to truncate a word too short, some entries will be unrelated to your search
Can be used at the end of a word and internally too

Example: Educat* = education, educator, educators
Ex: Wom?n = woman, women
Ex: S*nk = sink, sank, sunk

Last Update: March 19, 2013 17:18 | Tagged with: African Studies Performance theater