Research Challenge

The greatest part regarding this post was I finally knew exactly what I would write about, my history course. I take HIST195 and every class we have an assigned reading to do (prior to class) and write roughly a two page paper analyzing/reflecting the readings. The one problem though is the documents are written in old english; basically American history begining the semester with readings such as The Mayflower Compact and onward through slavery and the United States Constitution up to recent history. These readings tend to be lengthy, which doesn't bother me as much, and in grammar that doesn't allow for an uptempo reading pace. The vocabulary isn't something that you tend to read on a regular basis making these papers difficult for me. I often find myself rereading certain parts of articles and struggle to traslate into my own words often leaving me frustrated staring at my blank word document. In the back of my mind I know that these aren't supposed to be perfect papers but more or less our take on the reading, yet when I write a paper not specifically articulating the message I'm attempting to convey bothers me. I complete my papers, but I feel that I'm spending way too much time on them and I'm beginning to dread each one.....

Semester Reasearch Project

The biggest question I originally had going into this project was how would I reasearch the overall index of the Miller Center's multicultralism materials? Since that time I have become far more comfortable with the OPAC and database searches, but now I feel the next step in my reasearch will be difficult; finding other studies on similar projects. Questions that arrise to me instantly are:

Have there been similar studies previously conducted?
Would the article search be of use to me or would browsing the internet be more efficient?
What should my keyword search include?

I'm also thinking I need to narrow my search for the project. I feel trying to answer a general question of "is there any major area, community, and or culture that seems to be extensively insufficient/overly supplied in the Miller Center" would be far too broad and not give the research project enough direction. I would love some insight on possibly a certain culture or community of people that I would be able to focus on. Once this is accomplished it should be much easier to draw a conclusion and propose a theory as to what can be done for the Miller Center.

Discussion 6; Miller Center OPAC vs Great River OPAC

What I learned from the Miller Center OPAC is basically everything. I have been a student at SCSU for over two full years and will be a junior (credit wise) after this semester; never have I ever utilized this tool! I believe in a communications class I took my first semester we did a library tour, but I never recall discussing the OPAC and the advantages it can bring when researching for a project.
Features that were the same between the two sites were the basic and advanced searches and the ability to search by title, author, keywords, etc. When I used the 'basic' search on both sites I used the two keywords "homophobia sports" and received varying results. The Miller Center brought back seven materials of information while the Great River site only yielded one. While the Miller Center's search did appear to produce a source that was a seemingly perfect fit for the desired topic, I was a little disappointed with only one result. I again tried a few different key words in both the basic and advanced searches, but still only the one book. The book was "Strong women, deep closets: lesbians and homophobia in sport"; the description is fitting but more variety is needed.

Miller Center Library; finding a book

The topic I drew last week was "Homophobia in Sports" and began to research relavent materials through the LRTS website. Using this site my search consisted of two key words; "homophobia sports". Just by entering these two key words, in the basic and advanced search, I found only 7 total results. This was a bit surprising since it seems to be a prevalent topic in modern sports, yet luckily I was able to find a book that's description seemed to fit perfectly; IN THE GAME: Gay Athletes and the Cult of Masculinity. This material was located in the basement of The Miller Center. The book details accounts of personal stories from the author ( an openly gay track coach of a California HS squad), stories of other gay athletes (some openly and some not) and different aspects and trends of homophobia in sports. I would assume that not all searches for topics would yield this few of 'hits' and would take more time to dig through to find the most effective one.