COLWRIT R1A: Grassroots Movements for Peace

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1. State your problem as a question as succinctly as possible. 

2. 'Brain dump': Write down what you already know about your topic, including

• Names of people, organizations, companies, time period you are interested in, places of interest [countries, regions, cities], conceptual terms...

3. Decide what disciplinary methodologies you plan to use: e.g., sociology, political science, literature, psychology...

4. Fill in the gaps in your knowlege: get background information from specialized encyclopedias or other secondary sources.  Wikipedia can sometimes be good here, or Google News.

5. Select the best places/ databases to find information on your topic from the Library's list of databases by subject. Or use a catalog like Oskicat or Melvyl to search for books and other resources.

6. Use nouns from your brain dump as search terms.  

7. Evaluate what you find.  Change search terms to get closer to what you really want.

8. Refine Your Search Words - Using the information you have gathered, determine if your research words should be narrower or broader. You may need to search basic resources again using your new, focused topics and keywords.  

• PAIS International
  Not just scholarly articles -- also * government documents, * statistical directories, * research reports, * conference reports, * and web sources related to public policy, politics, economics, and social issues worldwide.
  
• Sociology: A SAGE Full-Text Collection
  articles from 33 scholarly journals in sociology.
  
• Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
  Scholarly -- Abstracts only -- covers political science and related fields: international relations, law and politics, political economy, public administration, and public policy.
  

The newspaper databases listed here contain articles published mostly after 1985.  For historical topics use Historical Newspapers [Proquest] database

• LexisNexis Academic
  Includes over 6,000 individual titles of international, national and local newspapers and wire services; radio and television transcripts; and business, medical, industry, and legislative magazines, journals, and newsletters.
  
• ProQuest Newspapers
  Indexes the New York Times (1999-present), Los Angeles Times (1985-present), Wall Street Journal (1982-present).
  
• Access World News
  articles from 600 U.S. and over 700 international news sources.
  
• Alt-Press Watch
  Alternative, radical, and independent magazines, newspapers, and journals in North America.
  

Within OskiCat, you can do either a keyword or subject search for your topic; usually you will get more results with a keyword search, while subject searching will retrieve fewer but more relevant results (if you use the correct subject terms). Subject terms are created by librarians and database vendors, so may not use natural language terms.  But when you find a specific subject heading, your searching will be much more efficient

Here are some examples of subject headings for peace topics:

• Peace movements
• Peace movements-- History
• Peace movements--[country name]

Related terms:

• disarmament
• peace-building
• peaceful change
• pacifism

The term 'grassroots' is informal. One possible subject heading is 'local government'; another is 'community organization.' 

In order to avoid plagiarism, you must give credit when

• You use another person's ideas, opinions, or theories.
• You use facts, statistics, graphics, drawings, music, etc., or any other type of information that does not comprise common knowledge.
• You use quotations from another person's spoken or written word.
• You paraphrase another person's spoken or written word.

Recommendations

• Begin the writing process by stating your ideas; then go back to the author's original work.
• Use quotation marks and credit the source (author) when you copy exact wording.
• Use your own words (paraphrase) instead of copying directly when possible.
• Even when you paraphrase another author's writings, you must give credit to that author.
• If the form of citation and reference are not correct, the attribution to the original author is likely to be incomplete. Therefore, improper use of style can result in plagiarism. Get a style manual and use it.
• The figure below may help to guide your decisions.
  
  

This content is part of the Understanding Plagiarism tutorial created by the Indiana University School of Education.

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.

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.

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