Faculty: Sarah Blick, Assistant Professor, Art History
Librarian: Carmen King, Fine Arts Librarian
Course: ARHS 232, Art of Medieval Europe
PRODUCTS:
I (with the help of Carmen King) expect to produce a series of handouts and a course-specific website.
This proposal seeks funding for a course release for Spring 2003 to enhance the library research skills of intermediate-level art history students by integrating information literacy into the curriculum of ARHS 232, Art of Medieval Europe. This class, offered yearly, consistently attracts some of the most serious and advanced students of art history. With this grant I wish to develop a series of assignments which will help students conduct high-level historical research using a range of print and electronic resources.
Currently, I have tried to forbid the use of websites and electronic sources because I have found that students have not been able to distinguish between true scholarship and fancy trash. However, this prohibition falls on deaf ears, as students do use websites for their research whether I like it or not. I know this because of the bizarre and strangely-worded information which creeps into their papers. Therefore, I have decided that the best way to handle this issue is to present websites and other electronic sources within a larger, holistic context of primary and secondary sources and in this context teach students how to make proper assessments of all kinds of information sources. This semester, Carmen King, Fine Arts Librarian, and Melissa Dabakis, Associate Professor of Art History, are working on an impressive project to teach basic information literacy to art history students in one of the two sections of the beginning art history survey. With the help of Carmen King, I would like to incorporate their excellent work and use it to train students in information literacy at a higher level. To this end, I wish to devise a semester-long series of assignments which will help students not only write a lengthy research paper, but learn information literacy on a high level while doing it.
I wish to teach the students about a wide range of research materials which are now available to them. I would like to introduce them to some sources with which they might not be familiar such as e-journals, image databases, and iconographic dictionaries, while re-examining other, more-familiar sources in a new light such as books and web pages. Instead of emphasizing the difference between print and electronic media, I would like the students to learn to classify the sources in terms of whether they are primary or secondary sources, and, most importantly, to learn how to distinguish the usefulness of such material for high-level research. To do so, I would like to create an assignment which takes the students through the process of doing original historical research supplemented by the widest range of research resources.
The overall assignment: Each student will write a 15-20 page research paper on a Gothic cathedral describing its beginnings, its various building phases and the social, historical, religious, and artistic reasons for these changes. They will also explore which portions of the architecture, its shrines and altars, and its decoration survives and they will research what aspects of the cathedral was destroyed during the Reformation and later. In the course of researching and writing this paper, the students will receive instruction on how to conduct high-level research and how to make the best use of all sources available: primary and secondary sources in both print and electronic form. Thus, each student will be required to complete several smaller assignments which will teach them not only how to find the widest range of sources, but how to properly assess these sources.
Equipment and Schedule: I would like to hold this class in Bailey 12 classroom at Kenyon College because it is already equipped with a computer and a projector. This equipment will allow Carmen King and me to teach the students about each area within the regular classroom space. In particular, it will allow us to give small capsule lectures of 15 to 20 minutes in duration, so that the students won't be overwhelmed by too much information given to them all at once. This will also allow Carmen King to give previously unscheduled refresher sessions, when needed.
Assignment #1 - Choosing a paper topic (second week of class):
This will be a class discussion on how to begin research on a topic one knows
very little about and how to narrow a topic so that the paper can be completed
in the course of a semester.
Assignment #2 - Beginning Bibliographic Searches (third week of class):
The students will review and expand their knowledge of basic bibliographic
search techniques and sources. After learning and exploring these methods,
the students will turn in a bibliography of 10 sources, indicating the manner
in which they discovered them. This will cover:
-How to search bibliographic databases (browsing vs. keyword; Boolean "and"
searching, etc.)
-Introduction to specialized indices: Art Index, RILA, Eureka, Art Abstracts,
etc.
-Review knowledge of searching Consort, Ohiolink,WorldCat, electronic
journals, etc.
-Browsing stacks (advantages and disadvantages)
-Browsing print and electronic serials (advantages and disadvantages)
-Utilizing footnotes and bibliography of scholarly books and articles (&
appropriate use of ILL)
Assignment #3 - Acquiring Basic Information on a Specific Topic (fourth week
of class):
The students will learn about the range of reference materials which they can
assist them in getting a basic grasp of their general topic. The students
will each make a ten minute in-class presentation on the general aspects of
their topic and where they found this information. We will examine
encyclopedias (Dictionary of Art, etc.), Dictionaries (including architectural
terms), CD-Roms, Biographical Dictionaries (such as the Dictionary of National
Biography), and basic web sites on Gothic architecture, web sites on their
specific cathedrals, etc.
Assignment #4 - Web Page Information Literacy (fifth week of class):
The students will explore why some web sites are better than others and how
one can develop the criteria to judge them. Once the class agrees on a set
of standards (guided by myself and Carmen King), we will examine a range of
sites in class and apply these standards to them as a group. Each student
will be required to explore the web and turn in a written report on four web
sites: two which they found useful and reliable and why and two which they
found unreliable.
Assignment #5 - Primary & Antiquarian Sources (sixth week of class):
Historical research demands a familiarity with primary sources. This week, we
will discuss primary sources (both written and visual), how to put them in
their historical context, how to judge their reliability, and how and where
one can access these sources. We will look at the following: archives,
reprinted document collections, document collections on the web, documents on
CD-Rom; Image banks such as AMICO or specialized web sites for museums or
research projects such as The Amiens Cathedral Project. We will also discuss
the role of antiquarian sources for historic research, how to judge their
veracity. We will learn how to access these sources through archival research
by visiting Special Collections, looking at reprinted later editions, etc.
The students will also explore biographical dictionaries and local county
histories (in both print and electronic form) which shed light on the
antiquarians' point of view and ultimately the students' topic. The students
will write a 1- 2 page paper discussing one primary and one antiquarian source
and where and how they located these sources.
Assignment #6 Secondary Sources (seventh week of class)
This week the class will examine secondary sources. We'll discuss the
difference between peer-reviewed and popular sources. We'll learn how to
examine the credentials, credibility, and currency of a wide range of
secondary sources. These sources and tools for analysis will include:
books and book reviews; journal articles (print and electronic) and article
reviews; later articles which rebut the opinions and ideas of earlier
articles; and web sites and e-mail discussion list archives. The students
will submit an annotated bibliography judging the worth of these sources to
their research, including at least one book, one journal article, one web
site, and one e-mail discussion list archive.
Assignment #7 Incorporating Research into a Coherent Paper (eighth week of
class)
This week the class will discuss how one incorporates evidence found through
library research into a coherent paper. How does one make an effective
argument? When is it appropriate to quote? How does one decide when to place
information in the text or in a footnote? How does one cite a variety of
sources? The students will turn in four sample pages of their paper in which
they incorporate a variety of sources and cite them correctly.