Compose a brief 500-750 word essay describing your research strategies and use of library tools and resources. Consider describing resources and techniques used for research, evaluation of information searches, assistance from your instructor and/or library staff and what research skills you may have learned. Tell about the good and the bad. Send as email attachment to sleist@vwu.edu by April 24, 2024.
Essay Writing Tips
Library Research Award
Essay Requirements
In determining winners of the library prize, the 500-750 word essay will be the key document for the judges. Take time writing the essay; the primary focus of the essay should be on your use of library resources and what you have learned through the research process.
Feel free to answer any of the following questions in your essay.
* What types of library or other information sources did you use? You may include discussion of books, databases, archival material, periodicals, internet search engines, websites, audiovisual sources, and other materials.
* How did you go about selecting and evaluating the sources you used? What were your criteria for selecting sources?
* How do you go about discovering your sources? What search tools did you use? What specifically did you discover about tools and techniques for research?
* Is there some method, theory, concept, or skill that you learned during the process that you will be able to apply in your academic or professional career?
* Did you find the need to request assistance from a librarian, a professor, a friend or someone else? If so, did the interaction have any impact on your research process? And/or was there someone who inspired your research in some other way?
Applications will be judged on how well student researchers demonstrate:
· Significant depth or broadness in the use of library resources and collections, including, but not limited to, printed resources, databases, primary resources, web resources and materials in all media.
· Ability to identify, locate, select, evaluate, and synthesize library resources and to use them in the creation of a project.
· Evidence of significant personal learning about the process of research
· Grammatically sound, cohesive, clear and engaging writing.
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Provide a copy of your application to the faculty member for whose class the research paper or project was completed. This will help the faculty member understand your project and the work that went into it. |