How to decode your reading list

How to decode your reading listDr Emma CoonanResearch Skills Librarian, Cambridge University Library

Course overview

1. What is a reading list anyway?

2. What’s what in scholarly formats

3. LibrarySearchPlus

4. What next?: active reading and notemaking

1. What is a reading list anyway?

Is it …

• A list of everything you must read for your course or supervision?

• Something you approach in order by starting at the beginning and working straight through?

• Collection of pointers to things that may be useful

• You have to select where to start and what to read

• Interaction between the question/title and your particular perspective

• Availability is also an issue

Why are you reading?

• To understand a concept?

• To gather specific facts?

• To identify the structure of an author’s argument?

• To find alternative views so as to challenge an argument?

http://sfl.emu.edu.tr/dept/alo/active4.htm

How will YOU choose what to read?

Prioritize your reading

2. What’s what in scholarly formats (and what will they do for me?)

What’s what in scholarly formats

Dixon, Thomas (2004) How to get a first. Routledge: London.

What’s what in scholarly formats

Davidson, D., ‘Locating literary language,’ in Literary Theory after Davidson, ed. Reed Way Dasenbrock (University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1993)

What’s what in scholarly formats

Davidson, D., ‘Locating literary language,’ in Literary Theory after Davidson, ed. Reed Way Dasenbrock (University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1993)

Tip: if you’re asked to read a chapter, don’t read the whole book!

What’s what in scholarly formats

Kieling, C. et al. Child and adolescent mental health worldwide: evidence for action. The Lancet, 378(9801): 1515-1525. 

What’s what in scholarly formats

Kieling, C. et al. Child and adolescent mental health worldwide: evidence for action. The Lancet, 378(9801): 1515-1525. 

Tip: journal article references tend to have a string of numbers at the end

3. LibrarySearchPlus

http://searchplus.lib.cam.ac.uk

Your supervisor:

There’s a great article comparing Ingres and Delacroix, by a guy called Shelton. I can’t remember which journal it’s from …

“ ”

Find your material

4. What next? Active reading and notemaking

Active reading

Always ask: “what’s in it for me?”

• What’s relevant/useful for my own argument?

• What other work does this piece link in with?

• Does it spark any lightbulb moments?

• What might be a white rabbit?

Beware of white rabbits

Maintain your critical distance

Keep asking: how does this contribute to my understanding/my argument/ my essay/my research?

Ideas and arguments that lead away from

your topic

Active notemaking

Image: Beth Kanter, flickr.com

Tagging

• Subject-based keywords – e.g. “entropy”, “Derrida”

• Logistical – e.g. “chapter2”

• Evaluative – e.g. “low priority”

• Pragmatic – e.g. “read”/”unread”

Futureproof your notes

Make sure you can identify:

• Which parts of your notes are quotations (including single significant words)

• Which parts are paraphrases of the author’s points

• Which parts of your own writing are a response to the argument or inspired by ideas in the text

Will you be able to tell the difference in a month’s time?

Active notemaking

http://tlc.uoregon.edu/publications/studyskills/Double%20Entry%20Notes.pdf

Questions?

Emma CoonanResearch Skills Librarian

research-skills@lib.cam.ac.ukhttp://training.cam.ac.uk/cul