Library Assignment 1

Here's a demo using a database article about Platonic bomber Steven Keyevitch.

Dr. G's Sample Library Assignment #1
(assigned in Lesson 4)

Gary Gutchess (student)
Dr. G. Gutchess (instructor)
English 101
11 Sept. 2003

What is the influence of Socrates today?

ARTICLE SUMMARY

Journalist Ron Grossman reports that Plato has inspired the dialogue in a recent novel by Steven Keyevich, PhD, Criminals and Demigods (1). The novelist, an Orthodox priest and college ethics instructor in Chicago, studied Plato while serving a 6 1/2 year sentence in Leavenworth Penitentiary for blowing up the home of a Yugoslav diplomat and conspiring to bomb a Yugoslav social club (Grossman 1). Keyevich says that he consoled himself in jail by reflecting that he was much less perfect than Socrates and yet sentenced with much more leniency (qtd. in Grossman 1).

ARTICLE CREDIBILITY AND RESEARCH VALUE

The Chicago Tribune is a respected newspaper, but it's not an academic source, and academics other than Steven Keyevich could doubt the importance of Grossman's article to the research question ("What is the influence of Socrates today?"). After all, Kayevich is only one copy of Socrates, and he is an unusual character. Still, Grossman's article might earn a brief mention in a research paper on a narrowed topic like "Socrates as a healer of souls" or "Socrates in prison."

<page break>

WORKS CITED

Grossman, Ron. "The Remarkable Tale of a Priest Turned Terrorist Turned Philosopher." Chicago Tribune 10 Jul. 2003: 1. ProQuest. Tompkins Cortland Coll. Lib. 11 Sep. 2003 <http://gateway.proquest.com/>

Dr. G's comments on this writing sample

I would like to point out a few things about this little report.

Notice, first, that my summary does NOT summarize Grossman's entire article. Grossman's story is focused on the life of Steven Keyevich. In my project, I am not researching Keyevich's life. Instead, I'm trying to answer a question about Plato. Accordingly, I picked out of Grossman's article only the three items that had to do with Plato: (1) Keyevich's imitation of the Platonic dialogues in his novel, (2) Keyevich's study of the Platonic dialogues in prison, and (3) Keyevich's comparison between himself and Socrates. Of course, at this early stage in my research process, I don't know if any of Grossman's story will be useful to me, when and if it comes time to write a full research paper about Socrates' influence on the modern world. For now, I'm simply summarizing and evaluating research, collecting materials that perhaps could be useful later.

Notice also how my summary uses a signal phrase ("Journalist Ron Grossman reports" at the start of the paragraph) together with parenthetical references (at the end of each sentence in the summary). Perhaps I could have used only one parenthetical reference at the end of the paragraph, since the whole paragraph is a summary of Grossman's article. Readers familiar with MLA know that everything between a signal phrase and the following parenthetical reference refers to the same source. In this case, however, I used the three parentheticals to provide complete clarity in identifying my source.

But why do my parentheticals refer simply to page 1? Did all of the source information actually appear on page one in the Tribune? Actually, I don't know how the original pages appeared. The article may have run several pages in length in the newspaper, but in ProQuest I have no way to know. There can be a pagination problem with electronic media such as ProQuest and InfoTrac. When the sources are scanned electronically into the database, the whole scan becomes one page because the text formatting of the original is lost. The editors of the database then add a label or header information to the article that tells the page number where the original text started. Or sometimes they identify both the start page and end page in the original. Or sometimes they provide the starting page number with a plus sign, meaning that there were multiple pages in the original. What the editors don't show is where the original page breaks were. Therefore, in my example, I had no choice but to say that the whole summary refers to page 1 of the Tribune. It was the only information that I had, so I went with it.

Sometimes in ProQuest, InfoTrac and other databases, it's possible to see an image of the original article--a replica or the source, not just a text data dump. Articles with a "pdf file" viewing option are available in photo-quality images. The "pdf file" is to an Adobe Acrobat file, an image of the original source document that preserves the original text format, including the original page numbering.

Choose the pdf option, when its available, so that you can refer to the original pages correctly in your citations.

One last point about my Library Assignment #1. Notice the works cited list at the end. When writing a hard copy paper, the works cited list appears on a separate page (or pages) appended after the end of the paper. When writing online, indicate this pagination with "<page break>" prior to the works cited list.

The works cited list always begins with the title centered on the page: "Works Cited" as shown above. Even if there's only one article to be listed, the title of the list is still "Works Cited."

In my works cited list, I used Hacker's A Pocket Style Manual to determine how the citation should look. In section 32b, Hacker lists the various possible forms. (Get out the book and take a gander.) I looked through 32b to find the form for a daily newspaper article, because the Chicago Tribune is a daily newspaper. I found what I was looking for in 32b23, and I used that form to give the full citation to Grossman's piece.

But wait! There's more! Because I found the newspaper in an online database, I added the path to the database, the database name, date accessed, and the short form URL. I followed the instructions given by Hacker at 32b31, the Kolata example on page 144. Then I was done. A piece of cake!

return to Library Assignment #1