Transfer Students

Welcome to the community! While there are many cultures at the University of Utah, it is our goal to participate with transfer students as group of people
-Who have a sense of common purpose(s) and/or interest(s) for which they assume mutual responsibility
-Who acknowledge their interconnectedness
-Who respect the individual differences among members
-and we, in the library and faculty of the U, commit ourselves to the well-being of each other and the integrity and well-being of the group of transfer students (to which you belong -yea!) (Wood, G. S., Jr., & Judikis, J. C., 2002)

There are many scholars on campus who can contribute to your success.  This guide is part of an assignment where you will to explore campus and library resources with the following objectives: 
-How to find a researcher on campus related to your interests
-How to access the full text of research using the library resources
-How to expand on that knowledge in your own research interests

Library Assignment (click on image below)

STEP 1: Find a researcher related to your interests
Search for either a discipline, subject of study, or just keywords related to your interest -no matter how broad (sociology) or specific (sense-making of immigrant workers), try to find someone who shares an interest you have using the Find a Researcher tool, or the Global U Inventory.

STEP 2: Find an example of a UofU researcher's research
You'll have to read the first page or so of their work to get step 2 done, but how do you find the full text?  There are a few options to try:
-Look up the title of their article/work (put the title "in quotes" so it searches for the whole thing) in
   The Library Catalog (some coverage of articles -not all)
   These general databases: SCOPUS, Academic Search Premier, JSTOR
-Look up the title of the journal the article was published in via our Online Journals Directory. -and then track it down via that journal's search interface.
-Don't get stuck, ask for help: dale.larsen@utah.edu

STEP 3: Find a high-impact article that ties step one and two together
If you've been following along with the assignment in hand, you'll know quite a bit about the researcher and their field(s) of interest -how can you tie that together with another article?  Using keywords from your own interests and ideas, find an article in SCOPUS, and remember in the search results to sort: Cited By (highest) to find the articles with the greatest "impact". Here's a video (3min) on how to do just that.
-Don't get stuck, ask for help: dale.larsen@utah.edu

Reference:
Wood, G. S., Jr., & Judikis, J. C. (2002). Conversations on community theory. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.

Citation Styles gettin' you down?  Here's my top picks for 'Citation Management':
 

Zotero | Dale's Video Overview! 
(Our resident Zotero expert is ready to help)
 

NoodleTools
(how to use NoodleTools)

Dale's starter kit for engaging with complicated literature:

First Stop: Library Research:
As you find articles that you think are relevant, 
   get a small amount of citation information (title, journal, etc.)
   read the first page or so and write a sentence about what the article is saying
   find a quote that agrees with the sentence you wrote

Second Stop: Synthesis
After you have a list of articles, try to put them into a cohesive order where each article contributes to a greater narrative or point.  This can be helped greatly by a chaotic mind map where you try to tie concepts to each other into a greater whole

(Dale's sample is not the only way to do it, but it is one way that works for me :-)