English

Research Assignment

Research Assignment: Create your own Early Canadian Literature Anthology

This assignment has steps that you must complete before you hand it in at the end of term.  Please note the following important dates and make sure you complete the steps.

October 22: Attend the research session in the Library (EL 1470b) during class time (11:30-1pm). Aim to find three research sources during the library session (there will be time after the librarian’s presentation to search for articles using the useful tips you have acquired). (If you don’t find three today, keep looking later).

October 27: Bring the research materials that you found in the library to class for a workshop on reading
secondary sources/creating an annotated bibliography.

November 19: Submit an annotated bibliography with at least three correctly-formatted, relevant research sources and a brief summary of each source.  Annotated bibliography must include a correct D.O.I. for the text you are citing/summarizing. (If no D.O.I. available, then submit a PDF of the text (or portion of book) you are using.)

December 8: Submit final version of your assignment to D2L no later than 11:59 PM.

Assignment description:  Have fun with this assignment. You are an Early Canadian literature scholar who wishes to produce an edited text/anthology for use by students, teachers, and researchers.  Choose one of the following projects.

1. A short story or a long poem (more than 50 lines) by one of the authors from the course schedule (but not a work we have covered in class), or
2. A collection of 3 poems one of the authors from the course schedule (but not works we have covered in class), or
3. A collection of 3 works by different authors from the course schedule by various authors from the course schedule (but not works we have covered in class) on a particular theme that you think is illustrative of early Canadian literature.

The anthology you produce will have the following things (while the list appears long, don’t be discouraged:  you do most of these things in a basic research paper, too):

1. Annotated bibliography (approximately 750 words).  This will be the bibliography that you submitted, with any corrections or revisions suggested by me.
2. Critical introduction (1200-1500 words).  A critical introduction provides your reader with valuable information that allows them to understand the primary text(s) within a specific biographical, historical, and thematic context.  After a brief general overview of the primary text(s) and their interest or relevance, introduce the writer, using specific biographical details that you feel are essential to understanding the texts and themes.  Add any general historical context that provide useful context for understanding the works. Finally, provide an overview of the text’s or texts’ subject(s) and theme(s) that would help a reader understand and appreciate the work. Quote liberally from the primary texts and secondary sources as needed to illustrate your points.
3. 3-6 textual annotations for the primary text(s) that explain any term, allusion, or other thing that a reader might need to know. (Hint: if you don’t know what something means and need to look it up, chances are the reader will need to know as well). Make sure these are your own annotations.  (If you find a useful annotation by another writer, be sure to give full credit if you use it).
4. In-text citations and a corresponding Works Cited for your critical introduction.
5. A table of contents, listing the following

1. Introduction
2. The text
3. Works Cited
4. Annotated bibliography

6. A cover page designed by you with the title and author of the primary text(s) or the anthology title (if you are creating a thematic anthology), the name of the editor (that’s you!), using an illustration or illustrations that you feel reflects the themes of your anthology. Suggested sources for illustrations: Wikimedia Commons, Canadian Encyclopedia, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Library Archives Canada, Unsplash (a no-charge, copyright-free source of photos).  Be sure to include a picture credit for this source. The MLA handout and/or a librarian can show you how to credit an illustration. (Please don’t use AI-generated images: support creative people!)

• Annotated Bibliography (MRU Student Learning Services Handout)

• How to write an annotated bibliography (SFU Library)

• Writing an annotated bibliography - Memorial University Libraries

• Annotated bibliography guide - University of Toronto

• Annotated bibliographies - OWL@Purdue 

   

Conducting Academic Research With LibrarySearch 

LibrarySearch is MRU Library's one-stop search interface/catalogue that brings together resources across format, time, and subject. 

We have millions of e-resources and 221,000 physical resources in our collection, and LibrarySearch searches across those.

Things to remember when using LibrarySearch:

1. Sign in to save searches, items, and to request materials.

2. Use the pin icon to save books and articles to your Favorites for future reference.

3. Use the filters on the right. You will use Availability, Resource Type, and Date filters most often. Filter settings can be "locked in" so that you don't have to reapply them to every search that you make.

4. Some items may not be available, however, you can request unavailable items using what is called interlibrary loan.

5. When viewing an item record, scroll down to the Get it (for hardcopy/physical items) or Access options (for electronic items) section to get access to the item.

Helpful Search Operators to Use in LibrarySearch

You can use what are called search operators to search in a way to combine or omit different terms by telling the search engine exactly what you want and this can help you save some time (and frustration!)

• Use quotation marks to keep specific phrases together:

  • "national identity"

• Use AND to combine search terms (LibrarySearch automatically creates an AND when you write terms one after another, but it can be good practice to use an AND to help you understand the searches that you build) (AND narrows your search):

  • "Roughing it in the Bush" AND femininity

• Use OR to connect two or more similar terms (OR broadens your search):

  • nature OR environment

  • humor OR humour OR satire OR wit

• Use wild cards/truncation to substitute a letter or suffix with a symbol:

  • poet* (in this example, the search poet* will search for records that contain strings such as poetry, poets, and poetic)

Conducting Academic Research With Google Scholar

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is another great way to find high quality resources.

Besides providing links to resources in MRU databases, Google Scholar links to online repositories that contain articles the author has been allowed to upload.  Academia.edu and ResearchGate are among the repositories searched by Google Scholar.

By clicking on the Settings icon, you can select library links to show library access for up to 5 libraries (type in Mount Royal and click on save).  If you are logged into MRU library, links should automatically populate if you are running a Google search in another window. 

Google Scholar has a nifty citation chaining function. The Cited by function will forward you to indexed scholarly material that has cited a resource that you may be interested in. The Related articles link will direct you to similar articles that may have the same metadata or keywords. 

Helpful Search Operators to Use in Google Scholar

Google Scholar's Advanced Search is found by clicking the menu icon in the top left.

You can also add search operators to Google Scholar searches to build your own custom advanced searches in similar ways to LibrarySearch:

• Use quotation marks to keep specific phrases together:

  • "Woodsmen of the West"

• Avoid using AND to combine search terms with Google Scholar, as the search engine automatically creates ANDs between concepts and sometimes adding an additional AND can confuse the search syntax.

• Use OR to connect two or more similar terms:

  • "epistolary novel" OR "epistolary fiction"

• Avoid using wild cards to substitute a letter or suffix with a symbol—instead write out the complete words and connect with an OR

  • criticism OR critics OR critical

Databases

• MLA International Bibliography

  An index of journals, books and dissertations covering literature, language and linguistics, folklore, dramatic arts, printing and publishing, rhetoric, and composition.
• Project MUSE Premium Collection

  Provides full text of a growing number of scholarly journals in the arts and humanities.
• JSTOR Collection

  Digital library of academic journals, ebooks and primary sources. Includes content across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

• Literature Criticism Online

  Compilation of literary commentary covering centuries of analysis, both scholarly and popular commentary. Includes the series Children's Literature Review, Classical And Medieval Literature Criticism, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Drama Criticism, Literature Criticism From 1400-1800, Nineteenth Century Literature Criticism, Poetry Criticism, Shakespearean Criticism, Short Story Criticism, and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism

• Literature Resource Center

  • This link opens in a new window

  A literary reference database which provides users with a broad spectrum of reference information from antiquity to the present day.

   

CanLit Journals

Figure 1

Peter Steiner's Famous 1993 New Yorker Cartoon Illustrating an Issue Central to Information Evaluation

Note. From "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" [Cartoon], by P. Steiner, 1993, Wikimedia (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/Internet_dog.jpg).

Evaluating Information

It is good to find lots of search results, but, in order to use information skilfully, you need to know how to evaluate that information to determine whether a specific resource is appropriate to use in a specific use case (i.e. for a specific assignment).

The phrase "evaluating information" actually stands in for a wide range of judgments that we make about information in many different contexts, whether those judgments are about relevance, timeliness, quality, etc.

Librarians have developed several different acronyms to help people remember useful criteria to use in information evaluation. One of my personal favourites is RADAR!

RADAR stands for

Relevance

Authority

Date

Accuracy

Reason for Creation

We can ask the following questions to help us assess each criterion:

Relevance:

• Does this source fit my topic?

• What is this source's intended audience?

  • Is that intended audience appropriate for my use case in this assignment?

Authority:

• Is/are the creator(s) of this source clearly identified or known to us?

• How important is it in this use case to trust the source's creator(s)?

  • If it is important, why should we trust the source's creator(s)?

  • Is the source's creator credentialed or an expert in their field?

Date:

• Is the creation or publication date of this source identified or known to us?

• Is this source too old?

Accuracy:

• Do this source's facts "check out"?

• Does the source have references of its own?

Reason for Creation (take your best guess at this question using judgments from earlier criteria):

• Why was this source made?

• Was this source made to sell a product or service, to inform/educate, to entertain, etc?

(Adapted from Mandalios, J. (2013). RADAR: An approach for helping students evaluate Internet sources. Journal of Information Science, 39(4), 470-478. https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551513478889)

Primary vs. Secondary Sources

Primary Sources

The literary work itself, such as a novel, poem, story, play, essay, or a collection of these works.

Secondary Sources

Research and scholarship about the primary source work, or about the author/creator of the primary source.

Articles and Books

• original research appears in peer reviewed journal articles, books, or individual book chapters

• in-depth analysis, criticism, and commentary

• may explore a literary work or set of works, or an author's works as a whole, or a particular literary theme

Reference Works

• sometimes called background sources, includes encyclopedias, handbooks, or companion guides

• only basic or introductory information on a topic or person

• may describe and criticize a work, author, theme, etc., but is not comprehensive literary research or criticism

Book Reviews

• generally written within two years of the time the book was published

• published in journals, trade and popular magazines

• may describe and criticize a work, author, theme, etc., but is not comprehensive literary research or criticism

Scholarly vs. Popular Sources

A scholarly publication contains articles written by experts in a particular field. The primary audience of these articles is other experts.

Many of these publications are also referred to as "peer-reviewed," academic, or "refereed." They all mean essentially the same thing and refer to the editorial and publication process in which scholars in the same field review the research and findings before the article is published.

Some Helpful Questions for Identifying a Scholarly/Academic Article

1. What are the author’s credentials? Was it written by an expert?

2. Was it published in a journal (is there a DOI?)? (If you are not sure if a source is a journal article, you can enter the title of the publication into Ulrichs Web to check.)

3. Does it use academic or more technical language?

4. Does it includes a reference list of sources that it is citing?

5. How long is it? (Scholarly articles are typically longer than popular or news articles.)

6. Does it have a "Received" and "Accepted" date on it?

7. Is it an actual article? (Sometimes other types of content are included in scholarly publications, such as editorials/opinion pieces and book reviews. Make sure you are looking at an article.)

 Add / Reorder 

Activity: Is It Scholarly?

To make sure we are all on the same page, let's put our knowledge to the test.

Skim the following resources available through the links keeping in mind the characteristics we have discussed in class (for example: what is this information and where did it come from? Was it written by an expert? Where is this source published?).

Vote whether you think this source is Scholarly or Not Scholarly.

Source 1

Source 2

Source 3

Source 4

Source 5

Source 6

Source 7

Source 8

Image Sources

Photos:

Image Collection

Contains images from Archive Photos, Canadian Press, Motion Picture & Television Archive, and MapQuest as well as a variety of images from the public domain.

ARTstor

ARTstor is a digital library of nearly 1,000,000 images with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes.

Oxford Art Online

Provides access to more than 23,000 subject entries, 21,000 biographies, 40,000 image links and 5,000 images.

Bridgeman Art Library Archive

Founded in 1972, the Bridgeman Art Library works with museums art galleries and artists to make the best art available for reproduction. It represents a large part of the complete collection chosen for its suitability for web use. Over 17000 individual works of art are featured here cross-referenced and linked using Bridgeman's own categories.

LIFE Photo Archive

Search photographs from the LIFE Photo Archive.

Images on the Web:

Flickr Creative Commons

Creative Commons licensing offers an alternative to full copyright. Search the collection of Flickr images that have been offered for use with CC licenses.

Wikimedia Commons

Search freely usable media files.

Pexels

Stock photos

Tineye

Searches for images that match an uploaded file or another image on the web - great for tracing original creators of images, rights holders, or just finding more information.

Google Images Search

Great for finding high-profile images.

Archival Collections:

Glenbow Western Research Centre

Search the photographs collection in the Archives.

Alberta on Record

Search for digital material in the Archives Society of Alberta’s online portal.

Library & Archives Canada Image Search

Search for photographs, drawings, maps and art.

For more information on finding images you can use in your work, consult the Copyright Guide's Copyright friendly image resources section.

Citation Help

• Use the "cite" feature in most search tools to get you started with most resources (you will need to review and correct the citation).

• Cite Sources: Learn the correct way to cite sources by using these guides, tutorials, and videos.

  • MRU Guide to MLA style for Academic Work (2025-2026)

  • MRU Guide to Formatting Your MLA Paper (2025-2026)

  • MLA Citation Examples for Images (2025-2026)

  • MLA Handbook Plus

    • The go-to resource for writers of research papers and anyone citing sources. MLA Handbook Plus includes the full text of the ninth edition of the handbook.

• Academic Success Workshops: Academic Success Workshops are 75 minutes long and are offered both in-person and online. Registration is required.

• Appointments: Personalized online or in-person 30-minute appointments with a Learning Strategist at Student Learning Services located on the 2nd floor of the Riddell Library & Learning Centre.

• Use the Service Desk on the 1st floor of the RLLC for assistance as well as the library chat feature on the library website for quick citation questions.