Anthropology

Hello and welcome to the Simplify Your Research video series!

The videos on this page are the result of my own experiences - both as an instructor and a student here at SJSU.

Instead of the classic tutorial format, I wanted to present the content in a way that mirrors the way I teach in-person and on Zoom. As a result, the videos have only been loosely scripted and undergone minimal editing.

As the information landscape is fast-paced, and always changing and adapting, over time, new videos will be added and existing ones edited or removed if outdated.

In this video I talk about how you can use Wikipedia can help you to find, learn about, and narrow down your research topic.

While doing so is a great way to get your research started in a familiar and easier-to-understand manner, it must be done so with the understanding that this first step is for informational purposes only and that you cannot cop/paste, cite, or otherwise use the text of the actual Wikipedia article in your research paper/project, not even if you were to fully cite it. 

Google Scholar, when used with the SJSU library’s databases, presents a comprehensive way for searching nearly all of the library’s databases simultaneously.

Using this meta-search strategy works for all topics, but is especially useful for those topics that span multiple disciplines, as it eliminates the need to look for and search subject-specific databases individually. 

Determining if a research article is peer-reviewed is a crucial part of any research project, and especially so when using sources outside of the traditional academic database environment (e.g.,  Wikipedia, Google Scholar, websites).

When using the Ulrich's Periodicals Directory database the key is to remember to search for the name of the journal the article is in; typing in the article's title will not work.