English 261: Pathfinder You know that research is tough and time-consuming, but you’re good people, and I know you’ll want to perform a public service for your peers. For this final assignment, then, I’d like you to create your own pathfinder wiki, an introductory checklist of sources on one author we’ve studied. It’s not intended to serve as an exhaustive guide to the literature but to aid users in systematically locating materials on a topic. This assignment will help you understand the organization of traditional reference information and Internet reference information. Understanding this organization early in your academic career will help you with research in your upper-level classes.
You must include the following in your pathfinder:
A title bar indicating the author’s name, the years in which he or she lived, and the period in which the author published his or her most important works
A byline with your name and a line saying “Student, University of Wisconsin-Rock County” (so we can go public)
A six hundred-word essay that describes one or two key aspects of the author’s life, analyzes at least two themes in the author’s work, describes at least one literary technique the author used, and supports these points by referring to at least one of the author’s works
A thorough list of sources and your own writing to include the following:
a. Two relevant monographs about the author published since 2000. For each monograph: • cite it in MLA format • read and summarize the introduction to understand the author’s purpose • based on your reading of the introduction, explain how you know that this monograph could help your peers in their scholarly research b. Three articles from peer-reviewed scholarly journals or collections of essays. For each article: • cite it in MLA format • summarize the article (don’t cut and paste the abstract—I want the summary in your own words) • explain how you know that the article is scholarly rather than popular c. Two relevant web sites. Refer to “Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply and Questions to Ask,” sponsored and written by library staff at the University of California-Berkeley. It’s the most developed and thorough list that I’ve found.
A sidebar featuring lists of the author’s major works, careers, home, family members, and perhaps other information, along with a chronology of major events in the author’s life
At least five study questions of your own making on one of the author’s major works
Your final grade will be based simply on how well and how thoroughly you respond to each prompt.
You know that research is tough and time-consuming, but you’re good people, and I know you’ll want to perform a public service for your peers. For this final assignment, then, I’d like you to create your own pathfinder wiki, an introductory checklist of sources on one author we’ve studied. It’s not intended to serve as an exhaustive guide to the literature but to aid users in systematically locating materials on a topic. This assignment will help you understand the organization of traditional reference information and Internet reference information. Understanding this organization early in your academic career will help you with research in your upper-level classes.
You must include the following in your pathfinder:
a. Two relevant monographs about the author published since 2000. For each monograph:
• cite it in MLA format
• read and summarize the introduction to understand the author’s purpose
• based on your reading of the introduction, explain how you know that this monograph could help your peers in their scholarly research
b. Three articles from peer-reviewed scholarly journals or collections of essays. For each article:
• cite it in MLA format
• summarize the article (don’t cut and paste the abstract—I want the summary in your own words)
• explain how you know that the article is scholarly rather than popular
c. Two relevant web sites. Refer to “Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply and Questions to Ask,” sponsored and written by library staff at the University of California-Berkeley. It’s the most developed and thorough list that I’ve found.
Your final grade will be based simply on how well and how thoroughly you respond to each prompt.