General Education

Assignment Details

Library Assignment Guidelines

For this assignment, you are required to find TWO (2) suitable scholarly sources around the theme of ‘communities.’ In the Digital Ethnography Final Assignment, you will explore the theme of “communities” within the context of this course by focusing on a digital community of your choice.

You will use your scholarly sources to explore the digital community and the different ways in which your chosen communities communicate aspects of identity and culture. There are a wide variety of subjects/topics that you can consider.

Theme suggestions include:

• Knowledge

• Identity

• Communication

• Rhetoric/rhetorical styles

• Representation

• Digital Footprints

• Lurking/participation

• Surveillance

• Anonymity/pseudonymity

• Digital intimacy

• Cultural expression

• Subcultures

Once you have found your two sources, you will provide the following information:

1. A correct ‘Works Cited’ page entry for each source, following the APA guidelines. 

• A handbook to the APA style of citing and writing can be found through the following link: MRU Guide to APA Style for Referencing

• Make sure you are using the correct information as the formatting for a book is different from that for a scholarly/academic journal article. 

2. Below each entry, please answer the following questions:

i. What are the author’s credentials; why are they qualified to write about this topic?

• If a source has multiple authors, you only need to provide credentials for 1 or 2 of them 

ii. What makes this a suitable scholarly source?

• Briefly explain. 

iii. Why is this source relevant to your research topic? 

• Do not reply with ‘because it is about identity’- explain why/how it specifically relates to the assignments and its requirements/guidelines 

Your assignment must be typed, 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced, and include a title page with your name, student ID number, the instructor’s name, and the course code/title, and the due date.

Eventually, you are working on your Final Digital Ethnographic Final Submission (due later in the semester)

• APA citation format

• Minimum of THREE (3) scholarly sources, not including the textbook

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:

  • "social media"

  • "live streaming"

• 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):

  • "live streaming" AND surveillance

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

  • Reddit OR "social news aggregation"

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

  • surveill* (in this example, the search surveill* will search for records that contain words such as surveillance and surveillant)

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:

  • "digital intimacy"

• 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:

  • anonymity OR pseudonymity

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

  • ethic OR ethics OR ethical OR ethically

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)

You can use RADAR criteria as part of the Library Assignment.

2. Below each entry, please answer the following questions:

i. What are the author’s credentials; why are they qualified to write about this topic? (Authority in RADAR)

• If a source has multiple authors, you only need to provide credentials for 1 or 2 of them 

ii. What makes this a suitable scholarly source? (Date, Accuracy, Reason for Creation in RADAR)

• Briefly explain. 

iii. Why is this source relevant to your research topic? (Relevance in RADAR)

• Do not reply with ‘because it is about identity’- explain why/how it specifically relates to the assignments and its requirements/guidelines 

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

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 APA Style for Referencing (2025-2026)

  • MRU Guide to APA Style for Formatting a Paper (2025-2026)

  • Citing Images Using Figure Notes in APA Style

• 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.