Skip to Main Content

Introduction to Library Research: Getting an Overview

This guide provides help in getting started on a research project. It covers topic selection, finding resources, evaluating sources, writing tips and more. It includes a virtual tour of Trexler Library

Scholarship as a Conversation

Kenneth Burke writes:

Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.

Burke, Kenneth. The Philosophy of Literary Form. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1941.

Tutorial explaining scholarship as a conversation

This Tutorial was produced and made available by University Libraries at University of Washington

Developing a Good Research Question

This 3.5 minute tutorial is available via a Creative Commons License

Using Wikipedia Wisely

This 3.45 minute tutorial empasizes Wikipedia as a finding aid. The author discourages students from directly citing Wikipedia entries. Instead, the author illustrates how Wikipedia articles can lead users to authoritative sources and expose useful search terms for use in library databases and catalogs. 


Today's Hours

Contact Us

  reference@desales.edu

       610-282-1100 x1266

     @Desales_Trexler