Friday, September 21, 2018

Bibliographic Hygiene: Keeping Your References in Ship Shape


The last thing that is on your mind when you are drafting your thesis is probably your references pages. You know your sources, you might even know their authors by name. But when it comes to making that list of documents at the back of your paper, we need to make it with the idea that... someone else may have to find those documents someday!

APA, MLA, and various other disciplines have styles that help us point out the most relevant features of our sources. "Who wrote it?" is most important to the humanities.  "When was it written?" more important in the sciences.  But when we do our bibliographic work we still need to make decisions sometimes, about what to put where, and what information is really needed.

Your references should serve the reader – they should dish up every source in your document in an easily searchable format and contain all the information the reader may need to find the sources. In the 21st century this is probably a more complex process than ever. Even though we can Google up a storm, multi-media sources can be hard to track down. And despite our modern search engine powers, looking for obscure documents, dissertations from other countries, or a journal by the same name as another journal, can lead to bibliographic snarls!

Cases in point: Our office recently had to untangle a source snarl for a client’s references page. And I have dealt with this myself, trying to track down a master’s thesis I needed to read.

A student reached out to us because she had finished her anthropology thesis but was at a loss for how to cite some unpublished letters (to and from Edward Ayer, a major benefactor to the Field Museum and Newberry Library). She had found the papers unsorted in an archive. Literally found them in a box! She was a lucky researcher, because she had been looking for the letters based on a faulty citation. So, it was up to her to fix this paper trail. Carolyn recommended citing the letters under only Ayer’s name, even though he was not the author of all of them. Her reasoning:
Edward Ayer

 “It appeared to me that the correspondence was held in a single archive of Ayer correspondence and that what the reader needs is direction to the archive, not citation to individual pieces. The principle in my editing is to document with the clearest path of recoverability, so that everything on the reference list is accessible in a clear location, whether a book, journal, or website, or in this case an archive of correspondence.

So, in this case, the other author’s names would not be of any help. The student needed to cite them under the name of the archive they were found in – the only way for another researcher to find them until they are published.

My own problem required a 21st century solution. I just simply couldn’t find the thesis I wanted to read, and it wouldn’t show up in ProQuest or anywhere else, not even at the university where it was written. What was I doing wrong? …The one source I had that referred to the thesis had mis-typed the title. It was a plain enough title, and the author’s name was a common enough name, that I was on a wild goose chase until I decided to chase a different bird – I took to Twitter!

I found the graduate's Twitter account based on his bio, apologized for the bother, and timidly asked in his mentions (so that others might see)… can you send me your thesis? He was happy to oblige. It took a while to dig it up, but getting another citation was worth it I suppose. Now I can cite it as an unpublished thesis, with the correct title, and hope that the next person who wants to read about Northumbrian dialects can easily find the little gem I’d tracked down.

Bibliography is partly about giving credit to the scholars whose research we couldn’t do our own research without. It is also about keeping track of when and where research was done, for that is relevant information in many disciplines. But none of that matters if we don’t give our readers the right bibliographic clues to find those same sources. We’re not just referencing our sources to cover our own butts or to show our research areas. We’re doing it so that research can continue in our fields, even when we’re not around to explain our sometimes cryptic sign-posts. Theses and dissertations are rarely the end-all-be-all on a topic. Let’s leave nicely legible markers along our paths so that others might follow, and even surpass the milestones we’ve made.





Friday, September 7, 2018

Presentations, Brown Bags, and Workshops, oh my!

Presentations, Brown Bags, and Workshops, oh my!  

            We here in the Thesis and Dissertation Office are very busy working on presentations and Brown Bag discussions for the month of October to help keep thesis writers and dissertators informed, on track, and motivated. On October 2nd from 2-4 pm in Adams 103, we will be offering a Dissertation Essentials presentation that benefits all dissertators no matter what field. If you are enrolled in 799 next semester or are looking to enroll next semester, come get guidance on the most daunting aspects of the dissertation process. 





            October 3rd same time, same place, we’ll be hosting the same presentation specifically for thesis writers enrolled or enrolling in 699. October 4th from 6 – 8 pm in Founders Memorial Library, room 297, we’ll be discussing the submission process with ProQuest, the very last step before graduation. Then, on Oct. 6th at the NIU Naperville campus room 166, from 9 am – 2pm we’ll be giving a seminar for those of you writing a dissertation in Education. There will be plenty of time for one-on-one inquiries as well. October 8th from 2 – 4 pm in Adams Hall 103 we’ll explain formatting tables, figures and pagination. This can be tricky no matter how familiar you are with MS Word so make it easy on yourself by attending. October 17th 12 pm – 1 pm Adams Hall 103, come and discuss issues with Writer’s Block and how to overcome it. If you experience anxiety staring at a blank MS Word document this is a must. There isn’t a thesis or dissertation writer who doesn’t experience this stumbling block so come get advice from peers and the experienced writers in the office on how to work through it and come out better on the other side.


Finally, for many of us the proposal, and just understanding how and where to begin, is the biggest obstacle to the thesis/dissertation journey. On Oct. 24 from 12 – 1 pm in Adams 103 come talk with us about putting a proposal together, from formatting to narrowing down a workable research topic. No matter how many papers you’ve written, the proposal is a unique genre and you probably have questions.


To register for any of these events, please send a request e-mail to thesis@niu.edu and include the name of the event in the subject line. For more information, visit the Thesis and Dissertation Office website at  https://www.niu.edu/grad/thesis/workshops-support.shtml.