Doing Research
With The Library Web Site
(Part 1)
At the College of DuPage, we are lucky to be able to offer students a very high-quality library. The resources available are quite impressive in different domains, from the traditional library materials (books and periodicals) to the most high-tech resources that can be used for research; more specifically, the Library's Web Site is an extremely elaborate tool that allows full interactivity and service delivery over the Internet. These resources would be useless without the extremely competent personnel always willing to help a student in distress with a research project. This invaluable combination of material and professional quality is best summarized by the Library's mission statement.
These general remarks about the Library and the Library's Web Site also apply to our discipline, sociology. The catalog of books and periodicals for our discipline is quite extensive and up-to-date. If you take our classes, it is very likely that, at some point, you will be required to complete an Internet Research Project. The objective of these projects is to initiate you to sociology as a professional activity and to sociological research through direct application. But first, we need to outline what kind of information can be found on the Internet that is of interest for sociological research.
As part of a sociological research project, the information found on the Internet can be used as the topic of the research itself. For instance, if your research project was about revolutionary movements around the world today, you could surf the Internet to find the Web Sites of these different movements, then, your sociological work would be to examine these movements, through their Web Sites, just as you would if you were conducting an ethnography (check your textbook for the definition of "ethnography"). You would focus your research on the way these movements define their political goals and how they expect to attain them, the different symbols they use, where in the world they are active, etc. You could even contact these movements (providing that this is safe) and ask them about the importance of the Internet for them, as part of their objectives, compared to, say, distributing fliers or starting a hunger strike.
Another related way of working with the Internet is to focus on a controversial issue, like the death penalty or the War on Drugs. On these issues, and many others, there are many facets and social groups involved (basically, pros and cons). Your work would be to, again, surf the Internet and look for these social groups and examine how they present and discuss the issue. You would then be able to identify the lines of fractures in society on these specific issues and, once you have figured out who the social groups involved are,you may be able to see why things stay as they are or change.
This type of work involves more than just surfing the Internet; it requires the competent use of a search engine (like Alta Vista or Excite) or of a Web subject directory (like Yahoo!). The other thing required is a capacity to evaluate the information presented on the different Web Sites; believe it or not, certain social groups may not be completely truthful when they report information. You have to be able to sort things out between what is information and what can be downright propaganda. How do you do this? First, the fact that you are writing a project means that you are taking a sociology class, this should be your first source of information on a given topic. The second way of learning how to get the information you need and evaluate its value is to follow the great tutorial available on the Library's Web Site.
Copyright © 2001 College of DuPage
Department of Sociology, Health, Social & Behavioral Sciences Division, IC 1028 (630) 942 2495
monnier@cdnet.cod.edu
Updated January 4 2003
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