Through this program, I have expanded my skills in doing research and evaluating information in both academic and non-academic contexts. During the courses ISI 6300: Open Access and ISI 6371: Information Literacy, we discussed how to evaluate information at length, and the first two assignments linked below demonstrate this. The third assignment, a research proposal for ISI 5307: Research and Evaluation in Information Studies, demonstrates my knowledge of information science research methods. Finally, my major research paper (MRP) for my MA in English Literature provides an example of a longer research project which I have successfully completed.
Journal Evaluation
The first assignment, written for ISI 6300: Open Access, is an evaluation of two open access journals, based on both the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)’s inclusion criteria and principles of ethical publishing. For this assignment, we were required to first evaluate whether or not each journal met the DOAJ’s inclusion criteria and then evaluate the DOAJ’s inclusion criteria themselves. This assignment required us to think about the credibility of journals beyond just their inclusion in the DOAJ, and how inclusion or exclusion might impact journals in different contexts differently.
Information Literacy
The second assignment, created for ISI 6371: Information Literacy, is a libguide on fact-checking Canadian political stories, intended for an audience of Canadian adults. This assignment demonstrates information evaluation from a different point of view: how to communicate about it to a wider audience.
Because I chose political fact-checking as my topic, one consideration I had in creating the resource was ensuring that it appears politically unbiased to its users. In this case, that meant choosing a non-political platform (Media Smarts) to host it and ensuring that any resources I link are also non-partisan.
Note: due to the timing of end-of-term assignments, this document is a draft, not the final product.
Research Methods
Finally, the final project for ISI 5707: Research and Evaluation in Information Studies was to create a research proposal for a project in the field of information studies. In this assignment, I proposed to conduct a quantitative analysis of factors influencing the lifespans of digital editions and anthologies, using ones focusing on early modern women’s writing as a data set. While actually doing the project was beyond the scope of the course, completing this project proposal helped me to learn more about how to approach quantitative research and the factors to consider when collecting data for projects.
Major Research Paper
Although I did not take the research proposal beyond the proposal stage, I do have experience in following through on a sizeable research project through my MA Major Research Paper (MRP). For this project, I investigated the role of London-based chancery scribes in spreading English-language literature in the early fifteenth century, focusing on the career of scribe and author Thomas Hoccleve. This project gave me valuable experience in analyzing scholarly sources, both primary and secondary, in looking at those sources both in relation to each other and in relation to my own analysis, and in developing a coherent argument based on that analysis.