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Table
of Contents
You
can make judgments about the probable usefulness and quality of
resources by carefully examining information about them.
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Now
-- some practice in evaluating!
Let's
say you are researching for a paper on the topic of images
used in recent American movies about cultural minorities in this
country. Your instructor has advised you to use scholarly
resources. In your initial research, you run across the following
books and periodical articles.
Books
Just
looking at the information given above, which of these two, do
you think, would be better for you? Look carefully!
Okay,
okay, here's some more info --
You
do a little research and find out that Clara E. Rodriguez is
a professor of Sociology at Fordham University's College at
Lincoln Center. Westview Press is an academic publisher, putting
out books mostly in the social sciences.
After doing
little more
research, you find out that Randall M. Miller has written books
mostly on historical topics (e.g., Pennsylvania: History
of the Commonwealth; Union Soldiers and the Northern Homefront).
Jerome S. Ozer is not a major publisher; most of their publications
are aimed at public libraries; most of the titles they publish
deal with history.
Notice,
also, that one book was published in 1980, and the other in
1998.
Periodical
Articles
Just
looking at the information given above, which of these two, would
you think, would be better for you?
Okay,
okay, here's some more info --
You do a little research and find out that the article in Hispanic
is an interview with a Latino actor Emilio Rivera. Hispanic
is a monthly magazine published commercially. Here's the magazine's
Web site -- Hispanic
Magazine.com
After
doing a little more research, you find out that Denzin,
the author of the second article, is with the Department of
Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The journal Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies
is edited at Penn State University, and published by Routledge,
a British publisher. Here's Routledge's
Web site for the journal.
Go
to the Bulletin
Board for this class. Once you are there, click on 
Put in your name, and then write a response to the following question
(100 words minimum):
Which of
the 2 books, and which of the 2 articles, do you think, would
be better for you? Why? What information helped you make your
decision?
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