ENGL 28: Rhetoric of Storytelling (Medina)

The first step to successful information gathering is deciding where to look (once you’ve decided that Google is not the only place to look!) This means selecting a database. We subscribe to dozens and dozens, covering all topics and a variety of types of information sources.

Begin by deciding who you want to hear from.  Ask yourself which fields, academic disciplines or professions are likely to be discussing the issues you are researching. Then look up available databases by subject from the library’s homepage.

To start us off, let’s imagine I wanted to find articles discussing how successful managers use storytelling in the workplace to motivate their employees. I would want to get into the business/management journals, professional and scholarly. So, I would go to the library homepage, click on the Databases tab. Then I would use the Select-a-Subject pulldown menu to select Business. That would put me in a long list of databases … very long! What I am scanning for is one that is described as having “peer reviewed journals” or “trade magazines”. Business Source Complete fits that bill nicely. Is there another angle/perspective I want? Psychological? Communication? That would mean PsycInfo or Communication Source. 

Who do YOU want to hear from?

Use the subject list of databases to select TWO databases for your own upcoming research.

Once you have decided, click HERE to begin recording your progress.

How do successful managers use storytelling in the workplace to motivate their employees?

Becomes this beginning search:

What are you trying to find research on? Try to phrase what you are looking for as a question. Feel free to have more than one question!

Add your question(s) to your padlet posting.

Then reduce those questions to search words. Capture and post your beginning search boxes on the padlet.

Revise your initial search by:

• Scrutinizing your search results looking for additional or better terms
• being especially attentive to the words appearing the Subject fields
• making logical use of the Boolean OR
• perhaps, limiting major concepts to the SUBJECT field search.

 Final search in Business Source Complete would look like this:

• Look around for language in the Subject field of the records retrieved.
• Add or eliminate ideas/boxes as needed.
• Restrict key ideas to searching in the Subject field.
• Maybe switch databases.
• Experiment!

When you have found something that is working well, capture and post it on the padlet.

Add one final thing to  the padlet!

Select one really good article and post an MLA citation and PERMALINK for it!