Week 2 is down!!
On Tuesday, we went to the Undergraduate Library to learn how the library can help make our lives as students easier. We spoke with Dayna Durbin who is the librarian for ENGL105 courses. She gave us an introduction to the libraries, how to select a topic and how to find sources. There are 11 libraries- Stone Center, Wilson, Undergraduate Library (UL), Davis, Health Sciences, Everett Law Library, Park, Sloane Art, Knapp, ILS, and Kenan Science- that we can use when we need to study or when we need help, but the most popular are Davis (make the first floor loud again!), the UL (my personal favorite), and Wilson. Davis is the largest with 8 floors, millions of books, and experts in the humanities and social sciences. The UL has many study spaces, the Media & Design Center, and is specifically geared towards undergrads (hence the name). Wilson houses the archives and is perfect for silent studying. For our health science needs, we can go to the Health Sciences Library which is less crowded and has health expert librarians. Lastly, the Kenan Science Library has co-working spaces and STEM librarians for our scientific research. Dayna Durbin taught us about the website Credo Reference which has resources that we can utilize to create a mind map and get more background information for our research. We also learned how to focus our main idea by using specific terms such as “affected populations, geographic regions, time periods, specialized language.” In the example of researching mental health on college campuses, the affected populations would be on and off-campus communities, first-years, and staff. The geographic areas and time periods would be North Carolina in the past five years and specialized languages would be anxiety, university students, and dorms. We learned the difference between scholarly and popular sources. Popular sources are sources such as YouTube, Buzzfeed, and Wikipedia which are not written by experts, inform a large population and are typically not reviewed as carefully. Scholarly sources are written by experts and are peer-reviewed. We learned how to find our sources starting with background information and library databases.
On Thursday, we had our first peer editing session for our Feeder 1.1 Rough Draft. Currently, I am working on my Unit 1 project about the COVID-19 vaccine and booster shots. Specifically, I am exploring whether these shots are necessary or effective in the long term in combating COVID. It was very helpful to get feedback from someone in my group (go Epsilon!) who had the same topic as me. Before reviewing, however, we identified various types of research and explored how to correctly use CSE citations. We went over how to effectively provide peer feedback in a way that is nice but also constructive and helpful. For example, just telling someone “it sounds good” does not provide any room to improve or any specifics as to what “sounds good.” More useful feedback would be saying something like “I like what you did here, but could you give more detail about XYZ?” This provides constructive criticism and details on what can be improved. This was very helpful because I realized that I was mainly focusing on the global implications of booster shots and not the social implications, which I will include in my final. My research and the sources that I chose are working well, but I need to dive deeper into other subtopics such as infertility and the implications that the vaccine/boosters have on the world. My partner and I discussed the strengths and weaknesses of our drafts and how we could incorporate a more personal aspect for my feeder and how he could further develop his background. My next step is to revise my draft into a polished draft so that I can be ready for the next step in my research.
Featured Image Source:
@uncchicks. “Make the First Floor of Davis Loud Again.” Digital photograph. Instagram, @uncchicks, 26 Aug. 2021, https://www.instagram.com/p/CTD2YpZLapb/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link.