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How
to shoot yourself in the foot, or produce a "deer in the
headlights" response that will mess you up badly:
The way to produce paralysis is to ignore the check list below and try to begin
with the result (a perfect semester topic) without the journey--and
work--that's necessary to create a really good project that you
will enjoy doing, and will be justly proud of when you're done.
It's amazing how easy it is to fall into this
trap.
The best escape route is to follow the "road
map," which follows.
If you get
stuck, or are simply scared by the project,
please see your professor immediately. DON'T WAIT, because
you'll fall behind--and excuses after the fact are much less
credible than timely and sincere efforts to get the work done.
And remember that it's a rare faculty member
who will "bite" a student who sincerely wants to learn.
When dealing with faculty it's also wise to
remember the warning that "Grizz," a gifted restorer
of old homes here in the Hudson Valley, would give to potential
clients: "I only work with people who listen to me."
If you request and receive advice from your professor, make a
sincere effort to follow through on their suggestions before
returning to say that you're still having trouble. This is both
good manners and good strategy: if you show that you're serious
then your professor almost certainly will redouble his or her
efforts on your behalf. And almost certainly you will learn something.
If you DON'T follow through, it's only human
nature for your professor to devote most his or her limited time
and energy on students who are really making an effort. Don't
put yourself in a position of being written off as a poor investment!
Check List
for Week ONE -- following the first discussion in class of your
semester project. Be sure to follow ALL of the steps, rather
than just the ones that appeal to you.
1) Be sure you fully understand the assignment,
and ask for any clarification that
you need.
2) If you are assigned an open topic: Why did you decide to take the class? Right there
is a seed your project can grow from. If your professor gives
you a specific rather than an open topic, the steps
that follow will help you to address the assigned topic.
3) Browse through the required and recommended
texts for your art history class. Are
there any images--and text associated with the images--that you're
particularly drawn to? Read the sections that attract you, without
taking notes.
4) Using your reading in the text book(s)
as a springboard, do some surfing
on the Internet, keeping in mind that this is just to check out
what's "out there." It's NOT a search of Internet sources
to use for your paper, because so many Internet sources are unreliable.
Bookmark the most interesting websites so you can return, but
remember that often Internet sources are unreliable, and that
you will need to verify appealing / useful material in solid
sources. If you find a website that you think is immensely valuable,
Barnet includes a checklist for evaluating Internet sources on
page 289 of the 11th edition of A
Short Guide to Writing About Art.
But remember that a bibliography
that consists mostly of websites almost certainly will be weak
and inadequate.
5) Go to the Library and explore the stacks
to get a sense of available resources on campus. You'll be surprised
by what you find. The most efficient
way to do this is:
a) Start with a
search of the Library catalog to get a sense of the call number range
of the topics you may be interested in.
Why be concerned
about call numbers?? Marist
and most academic and research libraries use the Library of Congress
Classification. In this system, Library materials are
organized by category--and you can tell which category a book
belongs to by looking at the first letters of the call number.
For example, category N (and its variants NA, NB, etc.) includes
works relating specifically to the fine arts. But a savvy researcher
knows that there's much more "gold" in them thar stacks
("stacks" are the many rows of bookshelves in a library).
If, for example, you are researching Minoan art--the art of ancient
Crete--a Library catalog search will bring up books listed under
BL782, BL793, BL793, CB245, CD996, DF220, DF221, HQ1075, N5333,
N5635, N5660, NA267, ND2570, QE522, U29, and a digital book with
a call number starting with BL96. Why are these books scattered
all over the Library? Well, BL = religion / mythology. CB = history
of civilization. HQ = Family, marriage, women. QE = Geology.
And U = military science. Do you see how this broadens the researcher's
options--especially considering that in some ways art history
is a form of the history of ideas? Here are links to an article
that gives a good overview of the Library of Congress classification, and another
that explains how to read and use a call number.
b) Now that
you have some promising call numbers, go down to the stacks
to look for both specific books AND at the full collection of
books on the sheves either near your target book or in the call
number ranges you've identified--even the call number of the
e-book if it differs from the others you've found. If you take
your time, you'll discover books that you probably wouldn't find
if you just used the catalog. You'll also get a "hands-on"
sense of how works (for example) on architecture, painting, art
theory, culture, mythology / religion, history, and specific
periods of art will be in different parts of the library. All
you have to do is find a range of books that might interest you:
identify a call number category or a book that's helpful or interesting,
and then check the shelves close to where you found the useful
book.
c) Make a note
of the books that may be helpful to you--and if you're certain
you've "struck gold," borrow the book(s) from the Library
so you can do some reading at home. And please remember that
it's a kindness to your fellow students to return promptly the
books that end up being less useful as you'd thought.
Don't skip this step just because it's
a "nuisance" to walk to the Library.
This type of hand search is starting to be a lost skill, which
will set you ahead of the competition because it tends to result
in finding a wider range of material.
6) If you're not familiar with it already,
read some of the first chapters in Barnet's A Short Guide to Writing About
Art. Even if you ARE familiar
with Barnet, a quick review will probably help. If you felt you
can't afford Barnet (an expensive book) there are several copies
in the reference collection in the Library, and you can buy earlier
editions on Amazon.com for as little as a penny plus shipping.
Barnet will give you some ideas of how art historians often approach
their topics. Keep in mind that you DON'T have to choose one
of them. But this will give you some ideas as a springboard.
7) After a few days--within about a week
the first classroom discussion of the assignment--think about
your reading, library exploration, and surfing so far. Probably
some aspects of your chosen period of art are starting to become
intriguing, and some questions are starting to emerge. This is
the genesis of your project.
How will
you take notes?
It's now time to consider how you will
take notes for your paper. Especially
if your project is a large one, at this point it's important
to decide how you're going to
Organize your notes, so you can find things
easily, and
Choose or develop a system that works well
for you, so that you will know without question:
- The title and author
of the source you're drawing from
- The page number
that you found your information on
- Whether your information is a paraphrase
or a direct quote (an exact copy of
text written by another person). If your memory is very
good, it's wise to make a habit of quoting directly and indicating
clearly in your notes that this is what you've done. A person
with a treacherously good memory may paraphrase while taking
notes and then closely reproduce the original text in his / her
paper. If you're blessed with a memory of this sort, be sure
to finish your paper a few days before it's due. This way, you'll
be able to let it rest for a bit and then read it over and be
able to say to yourself, "Oops, I've read this before..."
and fix the problem.
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You might consider using Microsoft OneNote,
which is a powerful searchable database for note taking--the
basic version is now available FREE, with versions for both PC and Mac. OneNote includes a good tutorial, is
available in most campus computer labs, and is part of the Microsoft
Office bundle, so you may already have it on your computer.
So long as you're careful to indicate in your
notes when you're using a direct quote, OneNote works splendidly
in conjunction with OCR (optical character recognition) software
such as OmniPage
that allows you to scan a source and then copy and paste text
into OneNote. If the cost is challenging to your budget, there's
no need to buy the latest version.
There are also free OCR software programs
available on the Internet (do a Google search for "free
OCR software") but be careful not to download unwanted software
or even malware at the same time. This is how sites offering
free software make their money: Unless you're very careful you'll
get an extra software piggybacking on the one you actually want.
|
Click on the thumbnail above for large image |
| If you decide to stick
with physical notes, use 8.5 x 11
inch notecards instead of small ones. This will give you plenty
of room to include all of the info you need for each notecard.
It also will help to avoid writing on the back of the card--which
has the potential to drive you crazy as you look for something
on the fronts of a stack of index cards when it turns
out that you've written the crucial information on the back
of a card. |
Click on the thumbnail above for large image |
Writing notes in a notebook or using sticky
notes is OK for a small project, but
for a large project using a minimum of ten to fifteen sources
this quickly becomes unwieldy and will result in your wasting
time looking for your notes on a specific topic.
After the
first week: Finding your materials
8) Now it's time to read widely, THINK about
what you're reading, and start assembling a tentative bibliography.
As you read, your topic and how you will handle it will increasingly
come into focus. As your topic comes into focus it's time to
start taking notes, being sure to keep track of page numbers,
and what is a direct quote as opposed to a paraphrase. Again,
the strategies outlined below might seem cumbersome at first.
But remember that ultimately this method yields better results:
you'll have a wider range of information to draw from, and if
your aim is to gain a deep understanding of your topic, in the
long run it's faster.
Strategies to use:
1) Hold off for now
on our Library databases of journal articles.
2) Do a combination catalog and shelf
search
3) Approach books efficiently.
4) SNOWBALL!!
5) Use Amazon.com without conscience!
6) Consult bibliographies
7) Read
"Writing a Research Paper," in Barnet's Short Guide
to Writing About Art.
8) When
you're ready to do a focused search, use the databases
9) Assess your bibliography
1) Hold
off for now on our Library databases of journal articles. If you do a search too early
in your project you will get an overwhelming number of results
to sort through. The trick is to allow reliable authors do your
work for you: he or she will give you a good overview of your
chosen topic. Then, when your understanding is comprehensive
enough to be asking the right questions, you'll do a precise
database search (it's a good idea to ask a reference librarian
for help--they're great at designing searches) so that you get
a manageable number of results and find what you need quickly.
Do you see how this
saves time? Wrap your brain around an overview by competent scholars,
and then you won't need to sort through a huge number of journal
articles to understand the basic information in your chosen field.
A variant
of this strategy, which falls
under "snowballing" --and useful
when you're researching something that's entirely new to you--is
to find a good children's book on your topic that's aimed at
an 8-12 year old audience. Your initial response is probably
"WHAT??-- a children's book?!?" But you see,
children in the 8-12 age range adore facts, and it takes a competent
person to present the basic points of a topic in a clear and
engaging way that will satisfy this audience. If you read this
book, you'll get a quick and easy overview--and a good book of
this kind will have a bibliography for further reading. So, get
the basic overview, then you'll have the understanding to make
use of the more "grown-up" books. Tho this is a legitimate
technique, remember to leave the children's book out of your
bibliography, and to refer to your bibliography as a "Select
(or Selected) bibliography," which indicates that you're
listing the most important of the sources you used.
2) Do a combination catalog and shelf search--which
to an extent may overlap the search you did when following the
Checklist for Week One.
a) Now that you
have a clear(er) sense of your project, once again search the
Library
catalog to get a sense of additional specific books, and
by extension also additional call number ranges that may be useful to you. If you're not really clear
on how this works, go back and review the discussion
of call numbers in the Checklist for Week One
b) Armed
with your list of books to find and call number ranges to check
out, once again go down to the stacks to find specific books,
to search the shelves near these books, and also to search the
shelves in your chosen call number ranges.
This time, however, you'll be treating the
books differently: you'll be doing a careful evaluation of the
books you find, and will begin to "snowball"--techniques
that are outlined in the next two sections.
3)
Approach books efficiently. Before reading a promising-looking
book:
- Find the name of the publisher. A book by a major or small but reputable publisher,
or one published by a university press is probably pretty reliable.
- Check the back of the title page to find
the date of publication. A book written
in 1975, for example, may have much value, but it will be out
of date in some things.
- Figure that the information in most books
will be current about 10 years before the date of publication--for
more recent books this time will be less.
For example, a book published in 1975 will probably be current
for information that was cutting edge in 1965. Reason: It takes
time to write and publish a book. This is where recent journal
articles can be very helpful: as your project solidifies, you
can use a focused database search with a limited date range to
check out the most recent info on various topics.
- Read the table of contents. Some books have detailed tables of contents that
will help you decide to reject the book or lead you to examine
it more carefully.
- If the table of contents is promising,
read / skim the index in the back of the book. Sometimes a book will have just a few pages with
info you need. So long as you're careful not to pull information
out of context there's often no need to read a book cover to
cover.
- Check out the bibliography (more on that soon). If the bibliography looks solid,
this is promising. If there's no bibliography, you may want to
reject the book, as a scholarly book will tend have a bibliography.
When in doubt, go back and consider the publisher of the book,
the target audience, and also the reputation of the author. You
might also want to read some reviews of the book. If there's
no bibliography, but the book is written by a reputable scholar,
has a major or reputable publisher, but directed to a popular
audience, then using it will probably be fine.
- If everything looks good, THEN it's time to read the book.
- Remember that you don't need to read every
book cover to cover. Sometimes one
chapter is all you need, or just a few pages.
c) SNOWBALL!! Snowballing
is an old-fashioned and very efficient strategy to build your
bibliography and to find the info you need. (Imagine what life
was like when there were no computer databases to look things
up on, and a researcher would have to go through hard copy indexes--it
literally could take months!) The term "Snowballing"
is a metaphor: think of how children make a snow-man by rolling
a small snowball so that it increases in size by picking up more
snow.
To snowball:
Choose a source that you find very helpful,
then use this source as a springboard or signpost for where to
go next:
- Make use of an author's footnotes: if he / she mentions something of interest to you
and provides a footnote, look up that source, and snowball from
there.
- Check out the bibliography. Is there anything there that sounds promising? Look
it up, and continue snowballing!
- Does the author mention a topic that relates
to your interests? Look it up then
continue snowballing!
- Although typically an encyclopedia article
or Internet source is NOT considered an appropriate source for
a serious paper, you can certainly use these resources for
snowballing. For example, you can look something up in Wikipedia, which normally is not an acceptable
source to use in a footnote or bibliography, or Oxford Art Online (Requires Marist logon:
our library has a subscription. Check out the Library's Art and Art History page for links
to this an other resources). Read the article. Useful? Then check
out the bibliography of the article.
Do you see how snowballing lets other writers
do much of your work for you? They've already found good material
on your topic, and all you need to do is follow up on what they've
done. Of course a limitation of snowballing is that the sources
your chosen author uses are ones published before the
date of the source you have found so helpful. So, be aware of
the dates of the works you snowball from and be sure to check
more recent sources as well.
d) Use Amazon.com in conjunction with SEAL and WorldCat
Amazon is a VERY useful tool--especially when used in conjunction
with our Library
and InterLibrary Loan.
Our Marist Library catalog, Southeastern Access to Libraries (SEAL),
and WorldCat (World Cat requires Marist login)
are exceedingly helpful in finding Library resources on campus,
in the Marist area (SEAL), and worldwide (WorldCat). But these
catalogs don't have the same flexibility and power for identifying
things you may want. Amazon, of course, wants to sell you things--so
Amazon has a very high motivation (and budget) to help you find
what you need!
To use Amazon strategically:
- Go to the book
section of Amazon.com and type in any search term
that comes to mind--something you usually can't do successfully
with less flexible Library databases. Be inventive, and phrase
your searches in different ways. You'll get all kinds of results:
some obvious junk, and some gems. For many of the gems you can
use Amazon's "Look Inside" feature to check out the
table of contents, the index and some the first pages. Remember
that Amazon will mostly feature fairly recent books.
- Find something
promising?
Look it up in our Marist Library catalog and in databases for
other libraries: Southeastern
Access to Libraries (SEAL), and WorldCat (WorldCat requires a Marist logon).
Since Marist is part of the Southeastern Access to Libraries,
it will save time to search in SEAL first: You'll see immediately
whether Marist has the resource you want--and if it's not in
our Marist Library collection, you've already done the search
that pinpoints where the resource is.
- If we don't have
the book you want on campus,
request it IMMEDIATELY through Marist's InterLibrary Loan. It will help
to speed things along if you make a note of where the book you
want is and to put the location of the book in the appropriate
field of Marist's online InterLibrary loan form--being sure also
to mention where you found the listing (SEAL or WorldCat). SUNY
New Paltz, Vassar, and Bard are near Marist, do if one of these
libraries has the book you want--and it's listed as available--be
sure to note this in the appropriate spot on the online InterLibrary
Loan form.
- It's important
to move quickly--within the first few weeks of semester--to make
your InterLibrary Loan requests.
Typically it takes a week or two, sometimes three, for the book
to arrive. Usually you can take the book home, but be prepared
to photocopy as the loan period is limited--and sometimes the
lending library requests a restriction of Marist library use
only.
- The resources mentioned in this section
also appear as links on the Research
page of the Art History Resources
website.
e) Consult
bibliographies, which will point you toward "standard"
works in the field you're researching. And skimming through a
good bibliography will also give you a sense of who are reputable
publishers--so you'll be better able to evaluate books you encounter
outside of the context of a bibliography.
- Gardner's Art Through the
Ages, our History of Western Art 1 and 2 textbook, has in
its last pages a splendid bibliography that's organized by chapter
/ period. You may be confident that any work listed in this bibliography
is a solid source. Especially if you're an art major, note that
this book is long-term resource that's well worth getting in
hard copy: E-book subscriptions expire rather quickly. If you
don't have your own copy, check the Library--especially books
put on reserve by art history faculty.
- Most art history textbooks have a bibliography in their final pages, and--once again--you may be
confident that the works listed are solid. Be sure to check this
as well.
- Use the annotated bibliographies in our
Library collection, being sure to
check more than one so that you'll cover a wide date range. And
note that the Marmor bibliography is a continuation of the Arntzen
/ Rainwater one. Inevitably these will not list the most recent
books, but you'll be able to find the recent ones easily.
Eresmann, Donald L. Fine arts : a bibliographic guide to basic reference
works, histories, and handbooks, 2nd edition, 1979
Arntzen, Etta and Robert Rainwater. Guide to the Literature of Art History 1 (1980)
Marmor, Max. Guide to the Literature of Art History 2.
Chicago: American Library Association, ca. 2005. Covers works
published from around 1985.
f) Read "Writing a Research Paper," in
Barnet's Short Guide to Writing
About Art. In the 11th edition this is Chapter 13. In the section
of Chapter 13 titled "Finding the Material" (pp. 275-289)
Barnet gives a very helpful outline of the major art-related
reference materials and databases to consult. Our Library has
many of them.
Especially if you are an art history major,
be sure to get this book and become familiar with it as it will
help you immensely.
Barnet's book is undeniably expensive, but
an earlier edition will work nicely for you and is often available
on Amazon for as little as a penny plus shipping.
g) When you're ready
to do a focused search, use the databases. If you've followed
the earlier steps of this reasearch strategy road map, you should
have a fairly good idea of some questions you've not yet found
the answers to, gaps in your data--or things that you need to
verify in the most recent scholarship.
Now is the time to do a search--or series
of searches--that is focused and will get you exactly the information
you need.
Ask one of our highly skilled reference librarians
to help you to design a search of the databases listed on our
Library's Art and Art History page. You'll find that the
results of a clearly focused search will usually identify a fairly
small group of journal articles--so you won't have to wade through
a huge amount of literature to find the information you need.
h) Assess your bibliography to be sure that it's balanced
and has a wide enough range of sources. And remember that an
experienced reader will look at your bibliography before
reading your paper--just as you yourself did when assessing books
for their possible value to your project.
Here is a list of things
to consider when assessing your bibliography:
- Number of sources.
Your professor
will guide you on the required length of your bibliography, but
as a rule of thumb figure that for a carefully researched 15-20
page paper at least about 10-15 sources will be appropriate.
Remember that these are sources you actually use in your paper.
- Range of materials.
Be sure that you've searched broadly enough. For example, if
you're working with some aspect of Minoan art, your bibliography
would be too narrow if you listed 10 works, all of which had
some variation of "The Art of Crete" as their titles.
Depending on your paper topic, you might want to broaden your
bibliography by adding a works on (for example) symbolism, religion
/ mythology, architecture, biography, methods of making works
of art, methods of archaeology, and also one or more sources
on the culture of the period you're exploring.
- Dates.
Be aware of when your sources were published, and balance good
older sources with more recent ones to be sure that your information
isn't out of date. Remember that the information in most books
will be "current" about 10 years before the date of
publication--for more recent books this time will be less. For
example, a book published in 1975 will probably be "current"
for information that was cutting edge in 1965. Reason: It takes
time to write and publish a book. This is where recent journal
articles can be very helpful: as your project solidifies, you
can use a focused database search with
a limited date range to check out the most recent info on various
topics.
- In general, you
should AVOID encyclopedia articles in select (or selected) bibliography
of your completed paper [See below
for definition of "select bibliography."] Encyclopedia articles are
fine to consult for an overview, and to use for "snowballing." However, including in the
bibliography of your completed paper articles (for example) from
the Encyclopedia Britannica or Oxford Art Online
is a red flag that you've been lazy in your research. There are
exceptions to this rule, for example, the very useful Dictionary of the History of Ideas, which
contains articles by leading experts in their fields.
- Internet sources. Be sure that you evaluate Internet carefully
for reliability. Some are excellent; many are unreliable. Altho
it's fine to use even an unreliable resource for "snowballing," a bibliography consisting
almost entirely of websites will probably not be an adequate
one. Barnet presents valuable criteria to use when evaluating
a website on page 289 of the 11th edition of A Short Guide
to Writing About Art.
- One or more original
works of art may be on in your bibliography. If you choose an original
work of art, it is especially appropriate to use one that you
will be able to study in person.
- Textbooks are normally
NOT considered appropriate as a major source in your bibliography.
Unless you
are using a textbook to double-check information you'd like to
treat as "common knowledge," inclusion of your course
textbook in the bibliography screams out that you haven't really
done your homework.
- As your Select
(or Selected) Bibliography gets longer, you may find it helpful
to divide it into sections.
At the beginning of your bibliography put a short introductory
paragraph that says that you've organized your bibliography under
the following headings: a) ... b) ... c) ... and so forth. The
ellipses [...] indicate the place you'll put the titles of your
choice
- "Selected"
or "Select" bibliography. When assembling the final draft of your
bibliography there's no need to cite everything you looked at
in developing your project. Be sure to include everything that
you include in footnotes in your final draft. But there's no
need to mention sources that you used only for "snowballing."
This is where using the terms "selected" or "select"
along with "Bibliography" is very useful, as it indicates
that you are citing the most significant works that you consulted.
The Proposal:
Definition and reasons for assigning. To an extent, the word "proposal"
is misleading, as it suggests that you are outlining what you
plan to do in the FUTURE. To an extent a proposal does
indicate what your final project will look like, but remember
that a good proposal indicates that you've already done a third
to a half of the work needed to complete your project.
So, please take this
assignment seriously.
Two major reasons your
professor will assign a proposal are:
- To ensure that by
the due date you have assembled a tentative bibliography, done
a substantial amount of reading and have made crucial decisions
about the topic, scope, and structure of your paper; and
- To identify and discuss
with you anything that is of concern about your semester project
or term paper. It's much better to identify and correct problems
early on rather than ending up with a weak paper and much lower
grade than you would like.
It follows that:
- If you run into
a problem before the proposal is due, it's wise to meet with your professor
to resolve it. He or she almost certainly will be very happy
to help you.
- It's a really bad
idea to slack off in the early part of the semester and dash off a "proposal"
a day or so before it's due. If your hasty preparation is obvious,
then you'll have to re-do your proposal and meet with your professor
or receive written feedback when he or she is available--which
means you might have to accept a delay. And if your proposal
sounds plausible, you may have committed to something you can't
deliver on.
In contrast, a carefully researched and
written proposal ensures that you'll
have fairly smooth sailing for the balance of the semester.
The
long form of a proposal is
for graduate level work, and is at least a semester-long project
in itself. But it's worth looking at the description of the long
form of the proposal, as it will give you some things to keep
in mind both for the future and for ways you can improve a smaller
scale paper.
For example, an uncomfortable
question that undergraduate students rarely ask themselves is
about the need for the study: Why is my topic important--other
than to get a good grade this semester? Why would anyone
want to read it? Doing your best to address this issue will strengthen
your paper.
The short form of a proposal is
appropriate for most term papers, and consists of four parts.
a) A "problem statement"
/ statement of topic, which should be at most three sentences.
This isn't easy: to do it well you'll need to have a good grasp
of your topic and how you intend to handle it. One way to think
of your problem statement is as an "executive summary"
of your paper or project. Imagine you are at a party and meet
a person who might either offer you a job or an internship, who
wants to get a sense of your research skills and how your mind
works. He or she asks you about your paper. How would you describe
your project in a minute or less--before someone interrupts and
your opportunity is lost?
b) Statement of the reason
for your choice of topic. In at most 2 sentences, explain
how your chosen topic relates to your interests. Why did you
choose the topic? How does your topic relate to your professional
goals, interests you already have, or interests that have grown
with the independent reading you're doing? This statement very
loosely corresponds to the "need for the study" in
a formal (long form / graduate level) proposal. In the INFORMAL,
small-scale short form of a proposal, a carefully considered
statement of the reason you chose your topic will help to provide
focus. A clear understanding of why you chose your topic will
affect the way you approach your topic and organize your paper.
c) Outline. In simple
outline form, or in one paragraph, explain how you plan to approach
your topic. Based on the reading and thinking you've already
done, and on the bibliography you've assembled, what is the tentative
structure of your paper? This is not intended to be "written
in stone," for the project / paper will grow as you work
on it. HOWEVER, be sure that your outline rests on the strong
foundation of the work you've done so far.
In writing your
outline, consider whether you're writing a report or an
essay..
A report
is a well-organized summary of information the writer has gathered
on a given topic. In contrast, an essay is a sustained
argument in which the writer assembles evidence to support a
conclusion that goes beyond the sources he or she draws on. To
give a very simple example: "given a, b, and c, it seems
that the situation may be described as x." The writer of
the essay might find points a, b, and c in the literature, but
x is an original idea arising from careful consideration of the
available data. An essay, then, is a more advanced and sophisticated
form of writing than a report.
d) The annotated Bibliography
is the final part of a short proposal. By the time you write
your proposal you should have already assembled a solid bibliography.
Look again at the section titled "Assess
your Bibliography" and be sure that your bibliography
is balanced, and has a wide enough range of appropriate sources.
When
you are certain you have a solid bibliography, you may want to
organize it in sections. If you choose to do this, under the
heading "Selected Bibliography" say something like
"I have organized this bibliography under the following
headings: a) . . . b) . . . c) . . . " And then use the
headings, listing your sources alphabetically by author's last
name.
- List
your sources in the University of Chicago style (format),
noting that the format for a bibliographic entry differs in format
from a footnote;
- Add
an annotation for each entry:
- Why
will the source you've listed be useful to you? This might or
might not be obvious. And,
- How
are you going to access the source? Is it at Marist? Is it online?
Will you buy it or get it through InterLibrary Loan?
Documentation is crucial to scholarly writing,
and answers the savvy reader's very reasonable question: "This
is an interesting idea or statement. How does the writer--and
by extension, the I (the reader)--know that it's either true
or a legitimate theory or hypothesis?"
One way, of course,
is you (the writer) to write an essay, which
is a carefully developed argument leading to an original conclusion.
But if you are writing
a report (a carefully organized synopsis
of information you've gathered on a given topic) or for the component
parts of your argument (essay) you need
to show that your information (or data) is solid. You do this
by assembling a good bibliography and then pinpointing where
your specific facts or statements come from--with a citation
that includes both the primary or secondary source AND the page
number. Of course, if you're doing an original study and discussing
data you yourself generated, you would refer to your own work.
Below are discussions
of:
Finding
good images and documenting them
University
of Chicago Style, which
is standard for art history, and
The thorny question of how to identify "Common
Knowledge," and when it's OK to omit a footnote
Finding good digital
images and documenting them. There are a number of good reasons to use images in
your term paper--especially to make it clear to your reader what
you're talking about. You should plan on inserting the images
into the text of your paper in a way that will be the most helpful
to your reader. Then, of course, you must say where the images
came from.
- Finding good images is increasingly simple.
A good place to start is the image
source page of this website.
- There is no universally accepted format
for documenting images. Choose a format, and use it
consistently throughout your paper. For example, you could put
your source within the caption of an image, or you could put
it in a footnote or end note.
- Check with your
professor to confirm, but it will probably be fine to use the
names of well-known image sources, such as those listed in the image source page of this website.
The links lead either to the log-in page (ArtStor) or directly
to the "collections" pages where you may search for
and download images for personal and scholarly use. Remember
that for any use other than the "fair use" of images, such as using them
in an unpublished term paper or in a classroom presentation (NOT
posted a publicly accessible website) you will need to check
the Terms of use for each site.
For less well-known
online sources--ones you might encounter through a Google image
search--include the URL and the date you accessed the image.
- For images scanned from a book, Check with your professor to confirm, but it will
probably be fine to use full documentation, as you would in a
footnote.
- Sources of digital images. The image source page of this website contains
links to some major sources of good digital images.
- Bibliography: In your Bibliography, include
a section called "Image Sources," and present a simple
list of your sources, with URLs for the main page (or main "collections"
page) of such sites as ArtStor, etc. Include citations for books
from which you scanned images.
- If your paper is
accepted for publication,
you'll need a detailed acknowledgement of sources, and also will
need to arrange for licensing and the payment of any fees. So
be sure to keep a careful record of your image sources. Even
though image documentation may read: "Image source: Metropolitan
Museum of Art," it's wise to keep a note of the specific
URL of the image on the Metropolitan Museum's website, as this
will save time later. You'll find this task much easier if
you follow one of these methods: a) put a thumbnail image
and a URL and link in a section of your records on Microsoft
OneNote, or b) If you are familiar with PhotoShop, put this
information in the File Info field of each image. (Choose File
on the navigation bar near the top of the PhotoShop screen, and
then in the drop down menu choose File Info, and proceed from
there.)
University of Chicago
Style.
The University of
Chicago style is one of the two standard ones for art history, and the one that we use at
Marist for documentation (format of footnotes, etc.) of art history
research papers. It is particularly well-suited to the scholarship
of art history because the numbered footnotes allow for full
citations and also plenty of room for additional notes that in
your judgment don't belong in the main text of your paper. It
works best for your reader to put the footnotes at the bottom
of each page rather than at the end of your paper. And Microsoft
Word manages footnotes beautifully, re-numbering all them automatically
if you add or remove a footnote. Different editions of Microsoft
Word have different methods of inserting footnotes, so if you're
not sure how to insert a footnote use the "Help" function
in Microsoft Word or call our Help Desk (845 575-4357).
Unless you are citing
a web page or a source that was developed as a digital
resource, do your citation as if it were a hard copy source. For example, a digital version
of a book in our Marist Ebrary should be cited as if it were
a physical book, and a journal article that you find in digital
format through a database also should be cited as if it were
a hard copy source. It follows that there's no reason to use
the word "Print" at the end of a citation of a source
that you happened to consult in hard copy.
When using resources
in digital form, when possible consult the facsimile of the hard
copy so that
your page references will be correct. There are a number of electronic
databases that feature the same publications, and a traditional
citation is more informative than (for example) a Jstor URL.
Imagine a reader who wants to snowball from your work, but has
no access to the database you used, or may be trying to find
the source in hard copy.
Remember that footnotes
and bibliographies have different formats, and there are appropriate
formats for different types of publications. For example,
citations for a book and a journal article have different formats.
Listed below are some guides to the Chicago
Manual of Style:
Barnet's Short Guide to
Writing About Art includes a good overview of the basics of the University
of Chicago style. In the 11th edition the page numbers are 335-344.
Instructions for citing electronic materials are on pages
289-92.
The Chicago Manual of Style
Online gives an overview that is
brief and helpful for quick reference.
The Citation Machine allows you to fill out
an online form, and then generates a citation in the Chicago
Style:
Citation Machine NEW
bibliographic entry only
Citation
Machine OLD footnote
& bibliography
An extensive and detailed guide that you probably won't use right away is: Kate L.
Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses,
and Dissertations--which is constantly going into
new editions. So don't go out and buy this until you really need
it. We have a number of copies of Turabian in our Library's collection.
Here's a link to the newest edition available
in the Library.
"Common
knowledge." We all know that there's no need to footnote
information that's widely known, or "common knowledge."
But how do you know for sure when a bit of information is REALLY
common knowledge?
The rule of thumb
is that if you find the same fact in three reputable sources,
then it's fine to drop the footnote--being sure that at least one of those
sources is in your final bibliography.
This is fine, but it
doesn't take human nature into account. We humans have a way
of latching on to a source or viewpoint that makes sense to us,
and disregard other viewpoints as irrelevant. . . . that is,
until it gets to the point that we can no longer ignore the other
voices.
There's a method to
counteract this limitation in human nature, a method that at
first may seem absurdly laborious. But it's good craftsmanship,
will keep you out of trouble, and has the potential to improve
your credibility. As you become more experienced in your field,
you'll need it only when you move into new territory. But it's
a good idea to use it at first--and it's not hard if you have
organized your notes well.
The method
and rationale follow below.
The final step in writing
a paper is of course preparing the final version of your paper.
You may want to skip ahead to this step and then backtrack when
you've finished reading the section on the rationale.
Method: "colored footnotes." Here's what to do:
Here's what to do:
1) Write your paper
as you normally would, being careful to document (footnote)
all of your facts carefully--including the page number of your
source. You will, of course, NOT use footnotes when the ideas
are your own--for example, when stating the results of your own
careful analysis of theory, facts, or a work of art relating
to your topic. Put these first footnotes in BLACK text.
2) When you're done,
look critically at your documentation. Which footnotes strike
you as documenting "common knowledge"--the sort of
thing that a person familiar with your topic would know? These
footnotes that you've identified are candidates for being placed
in the "common knowledge" category, and--ultimately,
but not right away--omitted from the final version of your paper.
3) Double-check
these facts that you judge to be candidates for the category
of common knowledge, looking for two other solid sources
that say the same thing. At this point, it's OK to use a textbook
or a reference work, such as Oxford Art Online.
a) When find a second
source that says the same thing, ADD another citation within
the same footnote (that documents a given fact). Only this
time, put the citation in a DIFFERENT color, such as blue.
b) Do this again, looking
for a third solid source that documents the same fact. Add a
third citation, this
time in another color, such as red. Here's an excerpt from the paper by
a student who did this very well: EXAMPLE
of colored footnotes correctly done (Microsoft Word format)
c) You may find that
there's some difference of opinion in the sources you're using
for common knowledge. This is a GOOD finding! See below (Rationale) for an explanation.
Remember that this
is something you do ONLY for facts that you judge are probably
common knowledge.
Leave the remaining footnotes alone.
4) You'll now have
a rather colorful draft of your paper. Some of your footnotes
will include triple citations--the first in black, the
second in blue, and the third in red. Be sure to end this draft
of your paper with a bibliography that includes the sources you
used to nail down facts that are common knowledge. In this bibliography
you may want to identify sources you used for common knowledge
only by changing the color of the text of their bibliographic
entries, perhaps putting these entries in red text. Now your common knowledge sources will
be easy for you to spot--which is important as you will consider
removing some of these works from the bibliography of the final
draft of your paper.
Rationale: Why bother
with colored footnotes?
Colored footnotes
help to correct for your own human error, and (as far as possible) to eliminate
embarrassing mistakes from your paper.
- When you find and
use use a source that's really helpful, it's only human nature
to slide into assuming that what the author says is correct,
and that other views may be safely ignored. By double checking
your facts, you are pushing yourself to be objective, AND strengthening
your paper. Remember that if a knowledgeable person reads
your paper and finds obvious factual errors, he or she will assume
that there are other errors that are not obvious--and will reject
your work as unreliable.
- You may find that
the fact you've identified as potentially "common knowledge"
is universally (or almost universally) acknowledged. Good finding. For now, leave
your colored footnotes in place.
- Or you may discover
that there are different views on the fact that you're double
checking. This
ALSO is a good finding, as you will then modify your paper to
reflect scholarly disagreement. You might simply say that the
issue is a topic of lively discussion--perhaps with a footnote
to give examples--OR you may find it wise to add a few sentences,
or even a paragraph, in the main text of your paper to outline
the main divergent views of the issue. Remember that the University of Chicago
style lends itself to putting YOUR observations in the footnote,
if you judge that a given observation is important to a serious
reader, but doesn't really belong in the body of your paper.
You will see examples of this in your reading.
- If you decide to
develop your topic in the future, having your complete documentation all
in one place will be very useful.
PLEASE KEEP IN MIND
that if your professor requires this method, taking a shortcut
by fabricating the footnotes is a very serious form of plagiarism
/ academic dishonesty, because it is evidence of
a delibrate effort to deceive. If discovered probably will earn
you a failing
grade for the
semester--and may raise the question of whether you belong at
Marist.
There's at least one
more step to take before preparing the final draft of your paper.
But you may want to skip ahead briefly and see
how you'll edit the completed colored footnote version of
your paper.
On Plagiarism:
Avoiding trouble
We all know that plagiarism is Not Good!
But there are times when it may be unintentional. Listed below are three forms of plagiarism. The first
is obvious; it's important to be aware of the other two, as they
may not seem as clear cut. As Marist's reputation continues to
rise and the value of a Marist degree becomes increasingly valuable,
concern about academic dishonesty continues to increase as well.
Faculty typically use turnitin.com
to screen for plagiarism, are required to report instances of
academic dishonesty. These records are kept in the files of the
Center
for Advising and Academic Services, and it follows that when
faculty uncover academic dishonesty the first thing they do is
call to find out if the student in question has been reported
before. If a student is on file as having been caught before,
then this is distressing for all concerned, and may be the first
step toward expulsion from the College.
So, if you're having trouble completing your
assignment, it's wise to go and talk to--NOT e-mail--your professor
and let them know what the situation is. You might be granted
an extension--but if you aren't it's much better to submit a
weak paper with perhaps too many correctly cited direct quotations
(with quotation marks, or a "block quote" and footnotes)
than to be caught in academic dishonesty.
Plagiarism includes:
1) Submitting all or part
of a paper written by someone else.
2) Copying sentences and
or phrases from a source (book, etc.) without putting this text
in quotation marks, and without supplying a footnote that identifies
the source.
The rule of thumb for deciding
whether a footnote is needed is: More than THREE consecutive words, not counting "a"
"the" or "and" need quotation marks and a
footnote.
Beware of the too-close
paraphrase.
Three consecutive words (excluding "the" and "and")
may be used without quotation marks or footnote, provided that
it isn't an unusually good phrase. For example, the phrase "Italian
Renaissance Art" is in common use, it's hard to figure out
how to say it another way without clumsy phrasing, and hence
it doesn't need quotation marks. In a contrasting example, the
cake baked by Kipling's Parsee, which was "indeed a superior
comestible" DOES need quotation marks, and / or some reference
to Kipling as the author: it's a distinctive--and in this case
famous and amusing--phrase.Whether a phrase of this sort needs
a footnote or just quotation marks and an acknowledgement of
the author is a judgment call. The bottom line is that you must
indicate that you borrowed the phrase.
Some students will quote three or four
words without quotation marks, put in a bridge of a few of their
own words, and then a short quoted phrase without quotation marks,
another bridge of their own words, and so forth. This also is a form of plagiarism--even tho any
of those quotations alone would be fine. Stringing quotations
together like beads on a string is considered plagiarism because
usually the student is editing a paragraph, and keeping the original
author's structure and many of his/her words. By doing this,
a student is suggesting that the organization of information
and a good bit of the text are the work of the student rather
than the original author.
3) False documentation:
Intentionally citing in a footnote or bibliography a source that
you did not in fact consult--or is not the source of a quotation--is
a form of plagiarism, / academic dishonesty and is considered
more serious than a paraphrase that's too close to the original
text that the writer has acknowledged as his or her source.
The reason it's considered
more serious is that it reveals a deliberate attempt to deceive
rather than the kind of inadvertent error that we all make from
time to time.
Examples of false documentation:
- Plagiarizing from a website,
but footnoting the plagiarized text to a scholarly book or article.
- Claiming to have examined
a work of art in person, but instead using images in a book or
museum website
-
- 5) The next step is to
SAVE the completed colored footnote version of your
paper with a new file name that indicates what it is. This
new file name could be: YourLastName_PaperTitle_ColoredFootnotes.docx.
Now that you have saved this version of your paper you will KEEP
this file to hand in by the due date.
6) The FINAL VERSION of your paper: Now
save the colored footnote version of your paper AGAIN with a
DIFFERENT name, which includes the word "FINAL." This new file name might be: YourLastName_PaperTitle_FINAL.docx.
When you finish the steps below this will be the final version
of your paper.
- Go through
your paper (in the FINAL version), and delete all footnotes that
include citations from three sources. This,
of course, is why putting the second and third citations in different
colors (such as blue for the second source, and red for the third) is so
useful. The colored footnotes are easy to see, so you won't delete
a footnote that should be there. Here is an EXAMPLE:
the same excerpt from the student paper that we looked at before,
with the colored (common knowledge) footnotes removed. See
how much shorter the paper becomes? It's also rock-solid, and
NOW the remaining footnotes will be helpful to an interested
reader.
- Prepare your final "Select Bibliography,"
OMITTING many of the sources you used to nail down the common
knowledge footnotes.
You will, of course, KEEP any source that:
- You also used as an important source for
the paper, or
- Appears in at least one footnote in the final
version of the paper,
-
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