Interdisciplinary Research Manual - Units.muohio.edu

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stock of what you have to work with (i.e., evaluating sources). It is an on-going
instrument that you update and use for your own purposes throughout the project.
Whenever feasible, sit in front of your computer when you look through the books
you've selected from your on-line search for closer examination. Once you have
determined that the book is useful for your project (see Evaluating Sources below), start
by entering the full bibliographic citation (author, title, edition, city/publisher/date for
books; website for electronic sources). Try using easybib.com or RefWorks (see below).
In the humanities and social sciences, there are usually sufficient books to
complete the bibliography. In the natural sciences, you may exhaust the relevant books
fairly quickly and need to move into the journal literature.
There are a number of standard styles for bibliographies and footnotes—APA
(American Psychological Association), MLA (Modern Language Association), etc. The
rules for each style are available at http://www.lib.muohio.edu/onlineref/; click on
Citation Guides and Style Manuals. Since you want to make your project as credible as
possible in the eyes of the experts you want to read your project, you should adopt the
style used by the majority of your sources. Once you have identified the appropriate style
for your project, you need to put all citations in that format, even sources drawn from
disciplines that use another style. Follow the style you have chosen down to the smallest
detail, including where spaces go in a citation, and whether you use periods or commas
after each section of the citation. Unfortunately, scholars tend to get rather pedestrian
when it comes to citations in bibliographies and footnotes, and they form an impression
of the overall quality of your work from such academic minutiae. Instead of bemoaning
this fact, you might as well recognize it and become a bit compulsive about following the
particular style you adopt. Simple ways to handle formatting of citations is to use
RefWorks, available on the library website under Research Resources, or easybib.com.
In your annotation: 1. Identify the perspective (e.g., sociological or feminist) from
which it is written; for edited collections, identify perspectives of the contributors you
expect to use as well as of the editors. Use the predominance of that discipline or
interdiscipline in the bibliography, the author’s title (e.g., Professor of Physics), or
information in the preface or introduction to guide you; when all else fails, google the
author’s name. 2. Identify (ideally in the author’s or editor’s own words) both the focus
of the work and the approach it takes (each will typically be identified in the
Introduction). 3. Identify the aspect of the book that seems particularly appealing at the
moment. See Evaluating Sources below for how to identify this information most
efficiently.
You want to identify perspectives, but not clutter up your annotation with
extraneous detail: Label the perspective; don’t present a mini-biography. For example,
say: The author is a social worker who directs a sexual assault clinic; the editors are from
law and psychiatry as well as child abuse activists. Not: “Berliner has an MSW and is the
Director of the Harborview Center for Sexual Assault and Traumatic Stress in Seattle.
Briere has a PhD and is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology. Hendrix
has an MA and an active member of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of
Children (APSAC). Jenny has a MD and a MBA and was the Executive Director of
APSAC. Reid has a PhD and works in Children’s Advocacy.”
The point of identifying an author's institutional affiliation is not to establish that
person’s professional credentials, but to help identify the person's disciplinary