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Resources
for Newspaper Students
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Notes on Doing Your Term Paper A term paper draft will be due on 3/28 and a term paper on 4/25. The term paper should be at least 1700 words (not counting references and notes), and should be double-spaced, typed—or if you prefer, you can write two shorter investigative pieces of around 1000 words in length. See handout on how to do the term paper. Your paper must involve library research and must have references to at least four different periodicals, books, or reliable websites, unless you have already fulfilled your essay writing requirement or receive a waiver from the instructor (if you do two shorter term papers, only one must meet this research requirement). Very important requirement: The subject of the paper must be approved by me well in advance—you must turn in a term paper draft on time, and your pitch for the term paper (due 3/13 on the message board) must be approved. The term paper, just as all papers written for the class, will be written for the school newspaper and must be of interest to the SAIC community. It will be graded partly according to how well you connect with your audience—the school community. Some suggestions:
If you can’t come up with a subject, meet with me and we’ll come up with one together. If you are interested in exploring a subject (say, student attitudes or experience, through a survey), but you don't know how to meet the research requirement, talk to me about it. There's a good chance I can suggest a way to do background research. The draft of the term paper must have most if not all of the research you intend to do for the term paper. Remember that you will need some time for planning and preparation—this is not an assignment you can do in a few days before the due date. If you have to interview people, you have to allow time to set up a meeting, and this may take probably a week or more if you are interviewing faculty or staff. If you have to request books by interlibrary loan, that will also take about a week. Students who have not already passed essay writing, must write a research paper—this is a departmental requirement. You must use at least four articles or books (see below). Interviews are encouraged—required if you have taken essay writing and do not have to do a library research paper. If you have already passed essay writing and don't want to do a research paper, then email me and let me know when and with whom you took essay writing. Instead of writing one 7-10 page paper, you may choose to write two 4-5 page papers—this might be more suitable for you if you are writing for publication in F, though a longer in-depth paper could also be publishable. If you choose to do two shorter papers, you must turn in a draft of each on the day that drafts are due, and, if you are required to do a research paper, one of these two papers must be a research paper using four sources. Don't turn in the drafts late! But if you do, do not wait too long—first because you will not get credit if your draft is more than two weeks late; second, because you must turn in your draft at least two weeks in advance of the paper(s), and you must get my approval before writing the paper(s). Go to another library if Flaxman does not have what you need; but first look at Flaxman’s computer databases, and always ask the reference librarian for suggestions to supplement your own search. Plan in advance—leave yourself an extra week and a half if you will need to order books by interlibrary loan. Examples: If you are writing about some school issue, such as how registration is handled at SAIC, check the ERIC database, the Chronicle of Higher Education or Nexis to see if you can find articles on the subject in other schools. If you are writing a paper on how SAIC’s curriculum is organized and why, go to the ERIC database, the Chronicle of Higher Education, or Inside Higher Education; see if there are books on art school education you can get on inter-library loan; or, look at the catalogs of other art schools! If you are doing an interview with an artist, use the library to find books, articles or reviews written about or by the artist, other publications by the artist, or interviews with the artist. Or, find articles about recent work in that artist’s medium and use the research to contextualize the artist’s work. If you can’t find sources, choose a different subject. Use sources critically Use common sense in evaluating your sources. Be careful not to rely on phony authorities—there are plenty on the web. Advocacy organizations have websites that may be useful and reliable, but you have to evaluate them critically. "Think tanks" are sometimes disguised public relations vehicles for special interests or have strong ideological bias. Don’t assume that because something is published, it is reliable—even if you find it in a reputable publication. Sources which were published 10 years ago may be out of date, either because later study has corrected their data or because their perspective is now widely considered uninteresting or misguided. If you are suspicious of the conclusions, maybe your suspicions are well-founded. How do you check on sources? Just as you would in any kind of reporting: you use many sources and check one against another. Check out the links at http://www.artic.edu/~pelitz/classes/1004/1004resources/evaluatingsources.html Plagiarism Imagine how you would feel if another student copied your art or stole your ideas, and imagine what you would want to happen to him. To avoid plagiarism when using sources, you must have not only a bibliography, but also notes on every page which will tell the reader the source of a direct or indirect quote, or a paraphrase. You must use a source citation in your text, in the passage that you are taking from a source, to give credit for every single idea or fact that you have taken from another published or unpublished source. (You can use one note, however, for all facts/ideas in a paragraph or two, if the context makes clear that is what you are doing.) Some people who are otherwise informed about plagiarism think that material on a website can be copied without quotation and attribution. Not true! Copyright law applies to the web—and even if the website specifically allows use without permission, you must cite your source. Plagiarism is using the creation of others without attribution—it is cheating, stealing and lying. Plagiarism is taken seriously at this school and is grounds for failure and for administrative disciplinary action. For more on plagiarism, go to the portal "courses" page and explore the links on the left on copyright, fair use and plagiarism. In particular, the faculty senate handbook at http://www.artic.edu/saic/programs/resources/library/faculty.html#addressing How to cite your sources For your text notes in the body of the paper, use the "author-date" method of citation. At the end of a sentence in which you want to cite a source, put the author’s name, the date of publication and the page number of the source in parentheses (Elitzik 2000, 235), where 2000 is the year of publication and 235 is the page number. If you have a short list of references with only one work by each author, you may omit the dates. In your Reference list at the back of the paper, list all sources alphabetically by author. For books, use this format—pay attention even to my punctuation (periods, commas, colon): Author (last name, first). Year of publication. Title in italics. City of publication: publisher. For periodicals, use this format: Author (last name, first). Year of publication. Title. Periodical name in italics, volume: number: pages. For a newspaper or monthly magazine: Author (last name, first). Year of publication. Periodical name in italics (month, day): page(s). For a website: Author (last name, first) or, if no author, then organization. Year of publication if available, otherwise, n.d. for "no date." Title of article or web page. url (web address). If the website reproduces a printed source, cite the source as if it were a printed source, then following your citation write, See url __________. No Two Timing, Please Warning: Avoid two-timing the teacher. Don’t turn in a paper you have used before or are using for another class; this would defeat the educational purpose of the assignment. In special circumstances, for the sake of a research project, and with the permission of the other instructor, one paper may be written for two courses. Two-timing, like plagiarism, is grounds for failing the course. |