Building Library Research Skills

I first started with the self-assessment just to see where I would need to start. According to the self-assessment, I needed to begin with Identifying Scholarly Resources and work my way down. The reason that was stated was because in an academic environment, it is important to select and rely on sources that are credible and convincing. For doctoral degrees in particular, it is important to be able to identify scholarly, peer reviewed resources to support your papers and assignments. I thought I have learned all I needed to learn when it comes to choosing a topic, how to select acceptable scholarly journals and using the Boolean commands. As I navigated through the Library Research & Information Literacy Skills (RAILS) I noticed there were information that I was unaware of, like not including small words like a, of, the, is, with, etc. into your research topic or research question when selecting the best keywords.

Boolean commands can be confusing at time. Whenever I search a specific topic I usually use the plus sign (+) between different keywords. I never used the OR or NOT Boolean commands when searching for articles. I tried to search my topic with the plus sign and received results over 1,000 but once I use the Boolean commands my results were narrowed down to 64 articles. The topic I researched on Summon was Student Retention Rates and received a result of 122,016. I scanned through some of the articles and did not really get any good articles that would help so I changed the topic to New Orleans HBCU's or Student Retention Rates and received a result of 64 articles that seem to be informative.

Once I finished navigating through RAILS I took the final assessment and scored a 13/16 and according to the results I already have a strong and broad set of research skills, but I could improve in the Identifying Scholarly Resources, Defining Your Topic, Searching Effectively and Evaluating Source Quality. I do agree on the results, but I am confident that I will be able to choose the right article for the topic of choice by selecting the right database and putting the Boolean commands to use.