RESEARCH DIARY HANDOUT

RESEARCH DIARIES

Your research diary is a record of your preparation of the pathfinder. You should record your research strategies as you develop them, any changes you make, dead ends, and mistakes as well as successes. NB: THERE ARE NO PENALTIES FOR "MISTAKES" OR "DEAD ENDS."

You should make at least two entries per week in your diary. Please make them contemporaneously with your research. The diary has two purposes 1) it is a learning tool for you and 2) it will help you get started on your research early and keep you going. Keeping a research diary helps you keep track of what you have researched and where and helps you organize your work.

Sample entries

January 25th: Spent three hours at the library looking for books and articles on the topic of domestic violence in England, Canada, and the U.S. Used subject heaings like "Domestic violence" in the online catalog; found out this was not the appropriate subject heading; it should be "family violence". Tried to find articles about the problem in England in the Index to Legal Periodicals and didn't find much. Then asked the librarian, who told me that ILP doesn't routinely index English periodicals; I should be using the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals. Found a bunch of stuff. Went to the Chimes for a beer to console myself for having wasted so much time.

February 2d: Used the WWW to locate experts in the field of domestic violence in the Baton Rouge and New Orleans area. Found out that there is a program in New Orleans to reduce drug-related domestic violence. Need to find out who is administering the program and call him/her. Maybe there are statistics available.

You may keep your diary in any written format you choose; it can be in a notebook, in a binder with one page for each entry, etc. But it must be legible and it must have sufficient content for me to be able to evaluate your progress and the amount of thought and analysis that you put into your project as you work on it.

 

 

 



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