10. Choosing sources

Choosing and using sources is an integral part of studying. Finding useful texts can seem rather daunting, especially if most of the texts recommended in the course guide have been checked out of the library. However, there is no need to panic and log on to Google. There are thousands of books and hundreds of thousands of journal articles in the Queen Mother Library. Dozens of these will be relevant to your essay topic. The trick is knowing where to look. Your tutor will not be impressed if you give up searching, and write a superficial essay built up of information from lecture notes and things downloaded from the Internet. However, if you are prepared to look a little bit harder in the library, you will find some wonderful sources, which will inform your work and give you original ideas.

Other disciplines:

There is no law that says you have to stay on Floor 1 of QML. Think creatively about your essay question. If it has a historical angle, you might want to look at something which will give you some background knowledge of the period. Books on cultural history and philosophy can be especially interesting, as they explore many of the same issues that sociology does.

Academic Journals:

It is easy to forget about these, but short articles are often more use than books. They are quicker to read and sometimes more interesting. There are several ways of searching for articles online, which you learned about in the pathfinder exercise.

Internet sources:

There are many interesting and scholarly pieces of work on the Internet. There is also a lot of superficial and inaccurate information. Be very careful about what you use from the Internet. Sites which are sponsored by universities or academic publishers are likely to give you very good information. You can often get journal articles on the Internet which are not available in QML. Scholarly societies also often have good biographical information about regions and topics and useful lists of recommended reading. However, be wary of study-notes sites, which are aimed at school students and will not bring your work up to the level we would like to see. Discussion boards and essays which are not published through an academic site often contain information which is not correct. There is nothing to stop you posting your work on the Internet, so what you find there could be the work of an enthusiastic undergraduate with some IT skills. Your marker will get twitchy if more than one item of your bibliography is made up of Internet sites. Use a mix of sources as you do your research. Wikipedia is just another encyclopaedia, and using encyclopaedias in academic writing is pitiful.

11. Using sources

Effective use of multiple sources is crucial. It is almost impossible to write a really good essay without multiple sources. Even for a critical analysis, it is a good idea to pick up some discussion about the author’s ideas from other sociologists who agree or disagree with him, and then compare what they say about the text. Learning from other thinkers and writers is what being at university is all about. You will also find that reading other people sharpens up your own ideas. However, you need to know how to incorporate other writers’ work into your own. Good use of material shows that you have done your research, and that you are also confident about your own opinions. It is an essential element in a first-class essay. Using sources well is much more than avoiding plagiarism. It is about showing off your knowledge, and making your sources work to back up your ideas.