Types of Sources
Discussion Ideas
- When might it be a good idea to use a popular rather than a scholarly source?
- •What does it mean to be an authority in different contexts? Who is an authority in your community, family, place of worship, sporting events?
- Do you agree that those who create scholarly materials are more authoritative than those who create popular sources? Why or why not?
- •What is the information cycle and how does it influence our choice of sources for different topics
- Where does the topic of particular articles fit in the information cycle?
Activities
• Ask students to find a scholarly source and a popular source on the same topic. How do they differ in perspective, content, treatment?
• Cut up the sections of a scholarly article and put them in order of what to read first.
• Compare two primary sources in your field – how are they different?
• Poll the class on something (like what they had for breakfast). Ask students to figure out how to turn it into a secondary source.
• Compare the way two different disciplines handle the same topic.
• Have students look up statistics/census data about their hometown. What information is available?
• Have students find a government website in your field and ask them to explore the site and share their findings.
Searching
Discussion Ideas
- Discuss the differences between library and web resources:
- GoogleScholar
- RitzDiscovery
- Discuss Boolean connectors (AND, OR, NOT)
- Discuss facet searching and limiting results
