1. Research Skills for
the Honours Project
Library Workshop for History Students
Chris Chan
Information Services Librarian
http://about.me/chancp
30 April 2013

2. Learning Outcomes
• Recognize the types and range of scholarly sources
you will be expected to use in the Honours Project
• Use discipline-specific databases to search for
information on your Honours Project topic
• Choose an appropriate method to access the full text
of articles that you find

3. How you will learn today
• Mini-lectures
• In-class quick polls
• Live demonstrations
• In-class exercise

4. Get set up for the quick
polls!
Go to this URL:
http://pollev.com/hkbulib

5. 1. Information Sources for
the Honours Project

6. Quick Poll #1
• Pretend that you are an Honours Project supervisor
• You have three students - on your handout you can see
the bibliographies of their Honours Projects
• Which student has produced the best bibliography?
• Spend 2 minutes discussing with the person sitting
next to you and then respond to the poll:
http://pollev.com/hkbulib

7. What makes a good
bibliography?
• Your bibliography reveals the quality, reliability, validity,
and authority of the sources you have consulted
• Books, scholarly journal articles, dissertations, and
primary sources should make up the bulk of your
bibligraphy
• Websites can be useful, but make sure the source is
authoritative. Not sure? Ask a librarian!
• The easiest way to locate and obtain scholarly sources
is to use the tools and services on the Library website

8. Library Honours Project Database
• The Library maintains a database of past Honours
Projects that have scored high marks - the link is on
the Library homepage and on your handout
• Apart from the bibliography, you can look at
examples of how to organise your project

9. Finding Scholarly Sources:
Disciplinary Databases

10. Quick Poll #2
When you need to do a piece of academic writing (essay,
project, etc.) what is the first information search tool that
you will use?
http://pollev.com/hkbulib

11. Why Use Databases?
• General search engines are great for getting started on a topic
• However, for in-depth scholarly research like the Honours Project,
disciplinary databases are important
• Example: Historical Abstracts

12. Focused Search
Broad search of the
scholarly literature -
science, education,
philosophy, etc.
Includes 2,300 academic
historical journals,
covering world history
from 1450 to the present

13. Specialized Search Limits
Databases provide special
ways to limit results that
are useful to the
discipline.
For example, Historical
Abstracts allows you to
limit the results to those
that cover a specified
historical period

14. Subject thesaurus (1)
Apart from simple keyword searching, databases usually
provide a thesaurus of subject terms. This allows for much
more precise searching

15. Subject thesaurus (2)
By matching the human-provided subject terms, relevant
articles can be more easily discovered

16. Citation information
It is vital that you note down all of the citation information
for articles that you use in your Honours Project...
Article
title
Journal
title
Author Publication
info

17. Automatic Citation
Generator
Databases help by providing automatic citation
generators
You still need to double-check the result!

18. China Academic Journals
For Chinese-language articles, China Academic
Journals is a key source:

19. History Databases Guide
Depending on your topic, there are many other databases that
may be of use to you. The Library maintains a guide on its
website (link information is in your handout)

20. Quick Poll #3
We have looked at a lot of the features that databases
offer. In your opinion, what is the most important reason
for using databases instead of Google when doing
Honours Project research?
Provide your answer in a couple of sentences:
http://pollev.com/hkbulib

21. Historical Abstracts Live
Demo

22. Obtaining Full Text

23. No PDF?!
Sometimes you will find results where there is no
full text available from the database:

24. Click this button:Citation (no full text)
Check for direct
link to Library e-
subscription
Check Library
Catalogue for access to
electronic/print version
Yes
FULL TEXT!
Interlibrary
Loan (ILL)
YesYes
NoNo

25. Interlibrary Loan (ILL)
• Obtain journal articles from libraries all over the
world
• Quota of 50 free articles for Honours Project
students (and only HK$5 for each article over the
quota)
• Article PDFs are delivered online within 3-4 working
days
• More info: http://library.hkbu.edu.hk/about/ill.html

26. Obtaining Full Text
Live Demo

27. Finding Full Text: Exercise
Look up the following article:
Xiaohua, Dai. "Hong Kong: Good beginning for the `one country,
two systems.'" Beijing Review 41, no. 27 (July 6, 1998): 8-12.
Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed April 29, 2013).
How would you obtain the full text of this article? Make your choice
in the online poll:
http://pollev.com/hkbulib
Listen and follow the librarian’s instructions to access the database named
Academic Search Premier

28. Honours Project Research
Consultations
• This workshop has given a brief overview of the
major skills and tools you will need to be successful
in your Honours Project research
• For more help, you can request a one-on-one
consultation with a professional librarian
• Sign up on the Library website - the link is also in
your handout

29. Summary
• You are expected to consult a range of different
scholarly source types when completing your
Honours Project
• Use disciplinary databases to make finding and
citing scholarly sources easier
• The Library can get full text for you in most cases -
remember ILL!
• Need help with searching, citing, organising, or
anything else? Ask a librarian!

30. Thanks!