Monthly Archives: October 2020

Temporary Folders, Permanent Citation Sanity

Picture this: your web browser is full of tabs, one for each article you’ve found. There’s a Google Doc with hastily copied and pasted citations of more sources. Your inbox is full of even MORE sources you’ve emailed yourself. Your grasp of reality is slowly slipping away as you get swept up in a Citation Cyclone. How do you end this insanity?!

Good news for you — there are a lot of citation management resources out there! The one we’ll talk about here is the temporary folder found on the library.

Here’s how you find it:

Perform QuickSearch of the library catalog. Next to each result, you’ll see a little folder icon.

Image showing where folder is found

Click this button to add a source to a temporary folder. Your list of potential sources will all go to the same temporary folder. You can find the temporary folder in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

NOTE THE WORD TEMPORARY. The contents of this folder do not stay forever. You’ll eventually want to export those sources to add them to your bibliography. You have a few choices here.

You can click “Export To…” to send your sources to a citation tool. Find out more about citation tools here.  These will help you with styling and formatting your citations correctly. You can also print your list of sources or email them to yourself to follow up on later.

Stay sane, stay safe, and try out the temporary folder today!

 

 

Off-Campus Access Troubleshooting

The Reference Desk has been seeing a fair number of questions about login errors when folks are trying to login for off-campus access to databases (see this guide for more info on that!). We appreciate that this can be incredibly frustrating!

Gif of Taylor Swift screaming

Here are a couple suggestions to get you logged in and at the articles you need.

Make sure you are using your Blackboard credentials

Only type in the username part of your university email address (leave off the @alaska.edu)

See if Caps Lock is on

Check that you are logging in for off-campus access and not into your card account

Image of off-campus access login page

What your login screen SHOULD look like

Image of Card Account Login

What your login screen should NOT look like

See if you can still login to Blackboard.  If you can’t, you may need to reset your password or contact university IT.

In fact, if all else fails, just go ahead and reset your password at me.uaa.alaska.edu.

Remember, you can always ask the Reference Desk for back-up if you’re feeling frustrated. We can walk you through these steps and be your moral support!

Let’s Talk About Indigenous Research Methodologies

Happy (belated) Indigenous Peoples Days! Let’s talk about indigenous research methodologies (IRM). Jelena Porsanger defines IRM as

. . . a body of indigenous and theoretical approaches and methods, rules and postulates employed by indigenous research in the study of indigenous peoples. The main aim of indigenous methodologies is to ensure that research on indigenous issues can be carried out in a more respectful, ethical, correct, sympathetic, useful and beneficial fashion, seen from the point of view of indigenous peoples. (Porsanger, Jelena. (2004). An Essay about Indigenous Methodology. Nordlit. 8(1): 105-20. 10.7557/13.1910.)

Want to learn more? Here are a few resources on indigenous research methodologies.

Book cover: Indigenous Research Methodologies

Bagele Chilisa’s book Indigenous Research Methodologies provides an extensive overview of IRM and how to use them. Chilisa, from Botswana, describes post-colonial perspectives, indigenous knowledge systems, culturally sensitive and responsive research methods, and decolonizing the research process.

Call #: GN380.C494 2012

 

Book cover: Decolonizing Research -- Indigenous Storywork as Methodology

“From Oceania to North America, indigenous peoples have created storytelling traditions of incredible depth and diversity. The term ‘indigenous storywork’ has come to encompass the sheer breadth of ways in which indigenous storytelling serves as a historical record, as a form of teaching and learning, and as an expression of indigenous culture and identity. But such traditions have too often been relegated to the realm of myth and legend, recorded as fragmented distortions, or erased altogether. Decolonizing Research brings together indigenous researchers and activists from Canada, Australia and New Zealand to assert the unique value of indigenous storywork as a focus of research, and to develop methodologies that rectify the colonial attitudes inherent in much past and current scholarship. By bringing together their own indigenous perspectives, and by treating indigenous storywork on its own terms, the contributors illuminate valuable new avenues for research, and show how such reworked scholarship can contribute to the movement for indigenous rights and self-determination.” –Publisher description of Decolonizing Research: Indigenous Storywork as Methodology.

Call #: GN378.D43 2019

 

Book cover: Decolonising Methodologies -- Research and Indigenous Peoples

“To the colonized, the term ‘research’ is conflated with European colonialism; the ways in which academic research has been implicated in the throes of imperialism remains a painful memory. This essential volume explores intersections of imperialism and research – specifically, the ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and tradition as ‘regimes of truth.’ Concepts such as ‘discovery’ and ‘claiming’ are discussed and an argument presented that the decolonization of research methods will help to reclaim control over indigenous ways of knowing and being.

Now in its eagerly awaited second edition, this bestselling book has been substantially revised, with new case-studies and examples and important additions on new indigenous literature, the role of research in indigenous struggles for social justice, which brings this essential volume urgently up-to-date.” –Publisher description of Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples

Call #: GN380.S65 2012

 

Book cover:  Indigenous research--theories, practices, and relationships“Scholars understand what Indigenous research is, but how we practice Indigenous research ethically and respectfully in Canada is under exploration. This ground-breaking edited collection provides readers with concrete and in-depth examples of how to overcome the challenges of Indigenous research with respect to Indigenous worldviews, epistemologies, and ontology. In collaboration with their communities, and with guidance from Elders and other traditional knowledge keepers, each contributor links their personal narrative of Indigenous research to current discussions and debates. Accessible in nature, this interdisciplinary research tool is an essential read for all students and scholars in Indigenous Studies, as well as in the education, anthropology, sociology, and history research methodology classroom.” — Publisher description of Indigenous Research: Theories, Practices, and Relationships

Call #: E76.7.I53 2018


Book cover:  Research is ceremony -- indigenous research methods
“Indigenous researchers are knowledge seekers who work to progress Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing in a modern and constantly evolving context. This book describes a research paradigm shared by Indigenous scholars in Canada and Australia, and demonstrates how this paradigm can be put into practice. Relationships don’t just shape Indigenous reality, they are our reality. Indigenous researchers develop relationships with ideas in order to achieve enlightenment in the ceremony that is Indigenous research. Indigenous research is the ceremony of maintaining accountability to these relationships. For researchers to be accountable to all our relations, we must make careful choices in our selection of topics, methods of data collection, forms of analysis and finally in the way we present information. I’m an Opaskwayak Cree from northern Manitoba currently living in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales, Australia. I’m also a father of three boys, a researcher, son, uncle, teacher, world traveller, knowledge keeper and knowledge seeker. As an educated Indian, I’ve spent much of my life straddling the Indigenous and academic worlds. Most of my time these days is spent teaching other Indigenous knowledge seekers (and my kids) how to accomplish this balancing act while still keeping both feet on the ground.” — Shawn Wilson, author of Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods

Call #: GN380.W554 2008

Want to see IRM in action? The library has access to many articles produced by researchers using IRM. Speak to your friendly reference librarians today if you’d like more information!

Citation, Citation, Citation

Citations are a big deal in academia. You want to be sure you carefully credit other scholars for the information they impart. Not only that, but there can be serious consequences for plagiarism, intentional or not. Fortunately, there are some citation resources available to you to make your bibliography as easy as possible.

via GIPHY

First, if you’re unsure how to cite in the style your professor has requested, the library has many style guides available. Here are the APA guide, the Chicago Manual of Style, and the MLA handbook.

If you want online help, check out Purdue OWL. This is a resource created by Purdue University to provide step-by-step citation help for Chicago, MLA, APA, IEEE, and AMA styles.

Grad students and faculty can easily find themselves overwhelmed by the number of sources they have. There are a number of tools that can help you track and organize your sources and sometimes even help generate a bibliography. In fact, your library card gets you access to the freemium version of RefWorks. Learn more about citation tools in this LibGuide here.

The Writing Center at UAA is another great resource if you’re feeling lost about citations.

Finally, check out this guide to citations here. You don’t ever have to feel lost if you know where to find your information!