To complete Research Exercise #3, you will:
Tertiary sources This link opens in a new window are publications that summarize information in primary and secondary sources to provide background on a topic, idea, or event. Encyclopedias and biographical dictionaries are good examples of tertiary sources.
When beginning to research a topic, it is helpful to begin with TERTIARY sources to get an overview of the topic, key issues, important people and events surrounding it, key theories, etc. For FYS101, you will be researching a particular primary source (Ex: an advertisement, a person, an artifact, a statistic/data point, etc.). Many of these sources may be looked up in a specialized encyclopedia or dictionary (tertiary source) so you can get a general idea or overview of what they are about so you may begin to research them more thoroughly. Tertiary sources also help you identify key words to use to search in library databases as well as search engines (like Google!).
You may find tertiary sources on the Web in online dictionaries, encyclopedias, and reference sources. The library also has databases of tertiary sources.
Watch this video from the University of Minnesota to learn what is meant by a "library database":
Below is a short list of library databases that include tertiary sources. For this Research Exercise, we will focus on the CREDO database, however some of the Collection primary sources are not available in CREDO, so if you are researching one of them, you might use a different tertiary source database. Continue down the steps on this page before clicking on any of these three tertiary source databases below.
For Research Exercise 3, we are going to learn to use the CREDO database to find a tertiary source. Before you go to CREDO, watch this brief video to understand what is in CREDO and how to navigate it.
You have two ways to get to the Shapiro Library website:
SPECIAL TIP! ***Once you are on the library home page, you can access my.snhu and Brightspace from the bottom of the page! So if you bookmark/favorite the Shapiro Library website in your browser, you will have one-stop shopping to all your SNHU needs!
Write three bullets, concisely explaining the most valuable info/ideas you gathered from this tertiary source about your primary source. Re-read your tertiary source, then think about which three things you learned about your primary source that you might share with your team. Write those down under question #2 in your Research Exercise 3 assignment.
Refer back to your list of priority questions you generated with your team in class. Does the information you learned in your tertiary source answer any of those questions?
Look for new keywords, phrases, names, events, or ideas that you come across in your tertiary source that might be useful in further research on your topic, and write them down under question #4 in your Research Exercise 3 assignment.
If your tertiary source came from CREDO, on the article page, look for:
Below are suggested search terms to look for tertiary sources about all of the primary sources in the Collections for the FYS101 team research projects. In some cases you will need to scroll down the results and select those that look promising. Generally those in CREDO with 500 words or more will be more thorough and have broader information.
NOT ALL PRIMARY SOURCES ARE AVAILABLE IN CREDO, so suggestions below include other tertiary sources to search in for those not available in CREDO. For tertiary sources not found in CREDO or another library database, you will need to create your own MLA citation.
In all tertiary sources look for "Related Searches" that might be offered, click on them to pursue more background information on your Primary Source and the theme of your Collection.