Interdisciplinary Research Manual - Units.muohio.edu

9
First, peruse some general reference works for articles on the overall subject
matter you want to explore (let’s say, Cuba). The library’s collection of reference books,
especially its encyclopedias and handbooks (both general and specialized), is a great
place to find an overview of your topic that puts it in overall context. You won’t cite
these sources in your project, but they are a great way to explore your general topic area.
You could start with the On-line Reference Shelf and go to almanacs and encyclopedias,
say to Encyclopedia Britannica. Search in it for Cuba and find the general article on
Cuba.
As you read about Cuba, you may discover that what interests you is really Cuban
culture, so you next read in more focused reference works and realize that, for you, the
most interesting part of Cuban culture is its music and how that relates to politics, etc.
Now you can start looking for books on Cuban music. When you do, don’t search for
books on Cuba and then search within them for books on music. That would work for a
Caribbean studies scholar focused on Cuba, but not for an interdisciplinary studies
scholar. Instead, use Boolean logic to search for the “intersection” of books on Cuba and
books on music, i.e. Cuba “and” music. That way, you get works that approach Cuban
music from two perspectives, region and music. If your search yields too many hits, you
can limit your search to books in English and to those published in the last five years. At
other points, you may want a broader focus, expanding your search from just music to
cultural life in general; e.g., so that you can look at art as well as music by searching for
art “or” music, and then searching for that set “and” Cuba. To further narrow your topic,
you could do an advanced search under Grove Music On-line for Cuba to find different
kinds of music as well as bibliographies.
Refining the topic. To refine that topic—to narrow, focus, and shape your
topic—you will need to work back and forth between general categories and specific
examples as the information you find raises different questions in your mind. Think of
this as a computer game: if you try something and it works, great; if not, back off and try
something else. In the language of the Boolean logic used in advanced library computer
searches, you do that by moving between “or” searches for the ‘union’ of two topics (to
enlarge your scope) and “and” searches for the ‘intersection’ of two topics (to narrow
your scope).
Because your project is interdisciplinary, you will also need to go back and forth
between two systems for classifying information, one developed by the disciplines and
the other developed by librarians. The disciplinary system develops technical disciplinary
terms used by authors in titles and abstracts, and it organizes information in disciplinespecific
databases and indexes; you access it by using key word searches. The library
system uses subject headings developed by professional librarians and organizes
information in the card catalog according to call numbers also developed by librarians;
you access it by using subject heading searches. The electronic card catalogs, databases
and indexes tend to be set up by librarians while the publications they include are by
authors writing largely within disciplines. The trick is to use each system to focus better
in the other system, sometimes expanding your search and other times contracting it.
Librarians should know which databases and indexes are most useful for your topic.
Subject headings of books in a card catalog or articles in indexes are assigned by
experts who read the books, decide what they are about, and assign them subject headings
as well as call numbers. Those subject headings bring together works using different