W&M Libraries and the Writing Resources Center staff offer mini-research sessions every summer for the Charles Center's summer research students.
If you would like to brush up on your research skills or learn some expert tips from librarians and writing experts, please check out these recordings.
June 5th, 10:30am
How do you organize the sources you find as you research? Random emails to yourself? Hand-written notes of titles you can never find again? What if we told you there was an easier way to both keep your sources found AND cite those sources later? This workshop will introduce you to Zotero from installation to creating citations in your Word documents.
Guide: https://guides.libraries.wm.edu/zotero
June 13th, 11:00am
When writing a research paper, it can be easy to overlook the human side of scholarship – how being cited in a study (or not) can have real, material consequences, and how social structures can systematically exclude certain people from scholarship. This workshop will explore these ideas and give you strategies for making your literature review more inclusive.
All research builds upon the examination of primary sources, yet the definition of “primary sources” varies across disciplines. For historians, primary sources are archival documents; for psychologists they are observation results; for archeologists they are physical materials. Such differences in terminology and methodology can make interdisciplinary work difficult, as each field has unique views upon primary sources.
This workshop provides an overview of how different fields within the Humanities and Social Sciences define and utilize primary sources, followed by a discussion of how embracing these disciplinary differences can improve interdisciplinary research projects.
If you've used Zotero in the past or if you've attended the Beginner Zotero session this summer, you are now ready for Advanced Zotero! This session will introduce you to group libraries, adding new citation styles to Zotero, and other features you can utilize to improve your usage of this citation manager.
Watch the recording.
Many libraries, museums, and other institutions have physical and digitized primary sources in their collections. This workshop will discuss how to locate such repositories and use their collections purposefully and critically. Particular attention will be paid to primary sources available through W&M Libraries' Special Collections Research Center.
Have you ever found the perfect article only to find it's 30 years old? You'd like something newer, but you can't seem to find it through your tried and true search methods? A citation trail is the solution! In this session, we will learn how to follow the citation trail forward and backward, as well as how to read a citation to determine what it is you're looking for.
Watch the recording.
When writing a research paper, it can be easy to overlook the human side of scholarship – how being cited in a study (or not) can have real, material consequences, and how social structures can systematically exclude certain people from scholarship. This workshop will explore these ideas and give you strategies for making your literature review more inclusive.
Slides and article for activity
Further reading: Case Study | Inclusive Citation: How Diverse Are Your References? | Understanding the Extent of Gender Gap in Citations
Do you ever struggle with the best way to organize an essay? Or worry that the final paper just won't make sense? In this Writing Resources Center webinar, you will learn how to structure an essay in a way that attends to the reader's logic. After taking a close look at typical essay structures, you'll learn how to create an "essay map," and you'll explore strategies for guiding your reader through your work. Expect an interactive session designed to help you write with your reader in mind.
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Have you been wishing for a refresher course on writing fundamentals? Look no further! In this Writing Resources Center webinar, you will take close look at that most essential unit of academic thought: the paragraph. Together, we will consider how the paragraph functions as a form of punctuation, compare well-developed and poorly-developed examples, and discover several types of paragraphs that can add clarity and focus to your work. Join us for an interactive session designed to improve your focus and better engage your audience.
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You've drafted your essay, and it's time to hand it in, right? Not so fast! Revising is an essential part of the writing process. In this Writing Resources Center webinar, you'll learn strategies to focus your revision on elements that will make the biggest difference in the quality of your paper. You'll also learn how to identify and correct common sentence-level errors. Join us for an interactive session that will provide tools to help you see your own work with fresh eyes.
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Have you ever wondered why the five-paragraph essay was taught in high school if that's not what you're supposed to do in college? In this Writing Resources Center webinar, you will build on your early training in essay writing by learning strategies for developing an organically-structured paper that contains an ambitious and debatable thesis, a compelling argument, and valid evidence for all key points. Expect an interactive session designed to energize your writing.
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Finding and evaluating research is just one step in the research process; managing it effectively and productively is another. How do you organize your research, take notes, annotate articles, manage data, and produce your research projects? What’s in your research toolkit and what is your workflow? What tools and processes do you find useful? Join us for some tips on useful tools and techniques for note taking, managing your research, and more, and discuss your own tips and tools!
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In addition, here is a link to the slides of this presentation.