Writing Assignment [due 3/27] Search Terms Assignment
- 1. Read/complete the assigned chapters for ONeil. Covering/considering all the chapters assigned from ONeil (ie. this week's and last week's assigned chapters) compose a page of single spaced notes that identify key terms, arguments, themes or methods that strike you as useful for translations across fields/sectors/or disciplines, and are worthy of further discussion.
- 1a. At the end of your notes, be sure to articulate Two Key Questions that extend insights or tensions that emerge from the text.
Search Terms/Bibliography Assignment:
- 2. Consider your recent interviews with a City of Urbana representative(s) and resident(s) to remind yourself of the range of concerns/challenges and problems they identified as most salient for the city/their city sector. Now consider the News Analysis assignment you had done to remind yourself of what concerns/problems for the city/city sector had gained enough attention to become part of local public debates. Write a short paragraph to summarize the range of concerns expressed here (they are likely not all the same).
- 2a. Now enter Google Scholar and JSTOR and spend some time searching through their databases using the Key Search Terms your Interviewee1 suggested for you. You should ideally be able to search for “Community, Data and XX” [Note: keep in mind you will have to continuously add/subtract relevant terms to refine your searches. So an initial search with only the suggested term "equitable treatment" (given by a contact) might have yielded thousands of search results, but adding in the terms human resources, hiring, municipal data, midwest brought a JSTOR search down to a much more manageable scale of just 36 articles. Do keep track of what search terms you add in to yield in refined results.]
- 2b. Considering the main problems/challenges your 3 different sources identified, identify 10-15 of your favorite selections for potentially relevant journal articles/chapters for your interview contacts. [Keep in mind: Selecting these articles will involve some negotiation: These might be your favorite selections/suggestions for your Urbana contacts because they directly respond to the concerns they expressed. OR: they might be your favorite selections because you anticipate they could help to shift a contact's perspective slightly by offering them other points of view, resources, relevant expert opinions, etc.) For each selected article, include a bibliographic citation for each article and the abstract/brief summary of its contents. Compile these in a bibliography for "Suggested Readings" for your city department. Make sure to keep track of which Key Terms you used for searching journal data bases that the contact suggested.
- 2c. Select and Skim through 2-3 articles among the complete 10-15 bibliographic resources you've compiled. And in a few paragraphs, summarize how the key findings from your selections could be relevant to your City Contacts.
* Reminder: we'll see each other next at 5PM on Wed. 3/27 in room 314 of the Main Library for our Atlas.Ti workshop. See you then!