Week 3, Assignment 2

Finding Books

For week 3 assignment I chose the book “The First Great Financial Crisis of the 21^st Century: A Retrospective, by G. G. Kaufman and J.R. Barth.  First off, I want to add that it hasn’t been the easiest for me to find sources as I initially thought it would be.  It has definitely gotten much easier after these past few lessons and readings from the Badke text.  After applying the methods from the lessons, it’s like a whole new world opened up for me.  I was getting a little worried for minute there!  This week however, I was able to do much less keystrokes (ok maybe not much less), but definitely able to find much more substance than before.   I don’t feel so handicapped.  Previously I was thinking that due to my topic having two different parts to it, a lot more research was going to entail to find all the information that I would need.   After this week I don’t think this will be the case.   With the new book and additional sources I found while searching for the book; it seems the information I will need is in these sources.  I’d say I am a happy camper with at least this aspect since I feel like I am finally moving forward and not backwards. 

Some of the things that worked for me this week were definitely experimenting with different key work combinations, and using the hierarchy tree a little bit.  Prior to this week, I was using full sentences and phrases.   This week I learned how to cut out the words that weren’t helping.  Learning how to filter my searches more often so that I didn’t have to comb through the lists as much this time around was a sigh of relief as well.   That alone cut my time in half.  I am still learning how to navigate through the Leatherby Library, however, since I am a first time user - and it’s frustrating; but the practice is helping.

  

As my research continues, it’s definitely getting more interesting now that I sort of know what I am doing - I think.  So far so good and I don’t want to toot my horn too much right now, but I definitely feel a little more confident than before.   Nevertheless moving forward, I think that it will be a little more exciting for me stringing all these sources together and learning about my topic.  This is what I intended since the topic is an interest of mine.   Furthermore, I think learning how to research better is only going to help me from all angles in my professional and personal life.   This, I look forward to!