WRCM 112 – Argumentation and Persuasion: Research support

You can always ask us! Members of the Research and Instruction team are here to help you:

• In-person, at the Research Help Desk, or in a scheduled research appointment;
• Over chat—look for the "Ask Us" button on our website; 
• Via email, at reference@oberlin.edu; or
• On the telephone, at (440) 775-5031

Learn more on our website, under:
Services and Amenities > Services for All > Research Support

Here's how we'll spend our time today:

1. Introductions (5 min.)
   • We'll introduce ourselves, and I'll talk briefly about research support at the Libraries.
2. Citation management software (10 min.)
   • Creating an account (Activity): You'll take a moment to create an account in RefWorks, Zotero, or another citation management tool of your choice.
3. Search platforms and searching (15 min.)
   • We'll explore the Oberlin College Libraries website, catalogs, and other search platforms, and practice simple search strategies to improve relevance and accuracy of results.
   • Searching for newspaper articles (Activity): We'll break into small groups, and practice searching for newspaper articles across platforms.
4. Source evaluation (20 min.)
   • We'll explore the SIFT source evaluation approach; then, in our small groups, we'll practice source evaluation on the newspaper articles that we've just located.