ResearchScapes

Discussions on the art and craft of research

Category: Student research

COVID-19 or Not, Shain Library Was Always There

May 10, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Guest commentary by Elizabeth Berry

Since my first year at Connecticut College, Shain Library has been a place to study, collaborate, research, and write, whether at a cubicle or in a collaboration room. During my sophomore year, I applied to be a scholar in the Toor Cummings Center for International Studies and the Liberal Arts (CISLA), one of the academic centers at Conn. After I was accepted into the prestigious program, I along with my peers was partnered with a research librarian who would help guide us through the next several years of our research journey, culminating in a Senior Integrative Project (SIP). I was paired with the wonderful Research and Instruction Librarian, Ashley Hanson, who met with me on a routine basis to alter my topic until I was passionate about my project, brainstorm key phrases for search engines, find niche articles for my SIP, and edit citations in my independent study. Hanson played a pivotal role in the final product: an independent study conducted under the Italian Studies department with Professor Paola Sica, which analyzed the role of feminism and writing in Elena Ferrante’s novel Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay.

Photo by Elizabeth Berry while studying abroad in Bologna, Italy.

After I completed my independent study during fall 2020, Research Support and Instruction Librarian Andrew Lopez, who had also helped me conduct research, suggested I try to publish a version of my SIP. This was something I had sort of considered, but Lopez solidified the idea and met with me to brainstorm potential publications to reach out to, as well as discuss a plan for how to go about sending out these query emails. In the beginning of the spring semester, I began sending out emails to various digital magazines and eventually Italics Magazine expressed interest in my article, “The Inclusive Feminism of Elena Ferrante,” which was published on April 23, 2021. This would not have been possible without the support of Hanson and Lopez who helped me become confident in my research and continued to push me outside of my comfort zone. Research has always been a daunting task for me throughout my academic career, but my time spent at the information desk with Hanson and Lopez has made me feel more comfortable when sitting down to write a long essay that requires secondary resources.

Citation Analysis of Honors Theses in Economics at Connecticut College

September 29, 2020 / / 0 Comments

There are approximately 500 Honors Theses in the Digital Commons at Connecticut College. Since 2011, all new Honors Theses are deposited by requirement in this growing and popular collection of outstanding student work.

Some of the most popular theses are downloaded tens of thousands of times, such as Cecilia Brown’s 2013 thesis, entitled “Are We Becoming More Socially Awkward? An Analysis of the Relationship Between Technological Communication Use and Social Skills in College Students,” which has been downloaded more than 73,000 times.

Director of Special Collections, Ben Panciera, recently told me on the telephone, Honors Theses average about 2,000 downloads overall, with about 400 downloads per year, or roughly once a day. The top ten theses in Economics have all been downloaded more than 1,000 times.

Honors Thesis Readership Distribution for the Past 90 Days
(Jul. 1, 2020 – Sept. 29, 2020)

Honors Theses are not only popular on the internet, at Connecticut College they represent outstanding undergraduate achievement. In a recent article, Director of Institutional Research and Planning, John Nugent wrote, “The honors thesis is a signature capstone research opportunity that requires substantial work from students and their faculty advisors—it is a two-semester commitment to conceptualizing and bringing a project to fruition.”

So what is the library doing with these important papers other than disseminating their ideas, the names of their authors, advisors, and our hosting institution, Connecticut College? It is my belief that the collection of honors theses maintained in our Digital Commons is ripe for research.

It is my goal to analyze every citation in every undergraduate Honors Thesis at Connecticut College in the hopes of discovering and quantifying the kinds of sources our senior honors students are using in their research to inform collection development and library instruction. Some typical questions that are asked every year include the following:

  • How long are theses and how many citations do they contain?
  • What percentage of sources cited are available in the library’s collections?
  • What can be said in general about senior honors students’ citation behavior, and what opportunities does this behavior create for instruction and collaboration?

Because the work of coding each thesis is so laborious, Director of Research Support & Curricular Technology, Jessica McCullough, encouraged me to focus on individual departments. So I began to concentrate on the department of Economics, since it is one of the most common majors at the College, according to the Academic Fact Sheet 2019-20, and the largest department in my liaison areas (Anthropology, Economics, Government/International Relations, Philosophy). Ultimately, I hope to work through the theses in each of these departments.

Honors Theses in Economics

At the time of this writing, there are 34 Honors Theses in Economics in the Digital Commons. Combined, they amount to 2,771 pages and 1,903 references, which I analyze below.

On average, there are about 3 theses done per year in the department.

The average economics thesis is 81.5 pages in length. The shortest was 29 pages, and the longest was 153 pages.

The average economics thesis contains 55.97 references in its bibliography. The smallest number of references was 13, while the largest number was 168.

The length of the theses in pages appears to be correlated with the total number of references, so that the longer the thesis, the more references it contains, and vice versa.

The overall prevalence of sources by type shows us what kinds of sources students in Economics are citing. Not surprisingly, academic journals were the most popular kind of source cited. Academic journals were closely followed by websites. The website category is broad, however, and includes many academic documents and presentations, including research that was accessed on popular and freely available online databases, such as EconPapers, IDEAS, NBER, RePEc, and SSRN.

When we look at the average frequency of source types by year, it is pretty clear that academic journals and websites appear to follow a similar citation pattern, while the citation of books appears to follow a different trend downward over time.

When we look at the the average number of citations to academic journal articles compared to the average number of references per year, they appear to be correlated. The average economics thesis cites 22.59 academic journal articles, with 2 being the smallest number of articles cited, and 87 being the maximum.

Quite pleasantly for our librarians, the vast majority of journal articles cited were available through our library’s databases and journal subscriptions.

Websites followed academic journals closely in frequency of citations. The average economics honors thesis cited websites 20.24 times, with 0 websites representing the minimum, and 88 websites standing in for the maximum.

The overall pattern of websites relative to the average number of references again looks similar to academic journals.

Despite an apparent downward trend in book usage, which, given societal and technological transformations over the past 15 years, is not surprising, books were still an important source of information for a good number of honors theses in economics.

The average thesis cites books 8.74 times, with a minimum of 0, and a maximum of 38. Overall, books accounted for 15.61% of all sources cited. There were 4 theses that cite no books at all, and 6 theses that cite books for at least 30% of their sources.

The percentage of books accessed in-house, meaning through the library’s consortium with Trinity College and Wesleyan University (CTW), was a bit lower than the percentage of journal articles. This could be due to the frequency of citations to textbooks, which the library does not attempt to collect.

Some other kinds of sources that were tracked include US government publications and foreign language sources. Government publications were cited 79 times, representing about 4.15% of all sources. They were more important for some theses than others. Significantly, gov docs accounted for at least 15% of all references in at least 4 theses.

Foreign language, or non-English language sources were cited 53 times, accounting for 2.79% of all references. Significantly, foreign-language sources made up at least 15% of all references in 4 theses, and they accounted for 45% of all sources in 2 theses that relied heavily on them.

The Average Economics Honors Thesis

  • 81 pages in length
  • 55 references in its bibliography
  • 22 academic journal articles
  • 20 websites
  • 8 books
  • 2 gov docs
  • 1.5 foreign language sources

Citation Issues

The most common citation problems had to do with consistency, or inconsistency. They can be summarized with the following list:

  • Alphabetization was not always evident.
  • Authors’ names were treated inconsistently in terms of spelling, order (Last name, First name), and priority (the order in which they appear on the publication).
  • Book chapters and other sources cited in other sources posed problems. For example, multiple chapters from the same book were cited inconsistently within the same paper.
  • National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) papers were popular in the economics honors theses, though they were rarely cited consistently, whether within a single paper or across the collection.
  • Pagination was rarely offered consistently, so some sources would have pagination, others wouldn’t, and many contained an inconsistent mix, even within the category of journal articles and book chapters, where one would expect pagination to be relatively consistent.
  • URLs were listed inconsistently even when it was clear sources were accessed online.
  • Volume and Issue numbers for journal articles were cited inconsistently.
  • Year of publication was an attribute that jumped around quite a bit within the citations themselves (from the front of the citation to the back of it), and which was sometimes not given at all, even when it was available on the source cited.

Further Consideration

Honors theses at Connecticut College are popular documents in our Digital Commons, as they are downloaded often around the world. Because they bear the names of their authors, the faculty advisors who worked to bring them to life, and the name of Connecticut College, it is important to think twice about what we are sharing on the internet.

Each year, new honors students struggle with the lack of overarching standards and/or guidelines in place for the creation of new theses. Each department handles their honors theses differently, and sometimes the faculty within a department will handle them differently. This level of customization is certainly a strength in some regards, but in others it lets some students slip between the cracks and they may fail to get the structure or attention they seek.

If we compare the results of this citation analysis of economics honors theses at Connecticut College with the field at large and the substantial body of literature on citation analysis that already exists, what will we find? How do these results in Economics compare with the honors theses of other departments at Connecticut College, or our peer institutions, Trinity College, Wesleyan University, and others?

How are our students taught to create citations? Are they graded? Are there guidelines in place on course syllabi and individual assignments? Why do citations seem to take longer than ever before for students to create? Can librarians help?

These are all questions I hope to explore further. If you are interested in discussing them with me, please get in touch!

Library Helps Expand Use of GIS to the Social Sciences

December 13, 2018 / / 0 Comments

While use of the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Lab at Connecticut College is focused primarily in the field of Environmental Studies, it could also be useful to students and researchers across the social sciences. So I was excited recently when working with Joseline Urbina ’19 on her Honors Thesis in the Government department when it became clear that she could use GIS for her project. What follows is Joseline’s own brief summary of her project and how GIS was leveraged to further her research. Many thanks to Joseline for agreeing to share this preview of her work in progress. And many thanks to Professor Beverly Chomiak for supporting this kind of research.

Joseline Urbina ’19

Government Major

For my honors thesis in the Government Department, I am conducting an exploratory case study of Ayanna Pressley’s 2018 Campaign for the Democratic Primary nomination in Massachusetts’ 7th Congressional District. Throughout my research, I will examine the strategies used during the election, the campaign, and the transition period to study how Pressley won against a ten-term incumbent to become Massachusetts’ first African American Congresswoman, and what does the win suggest for the future of politics.

One portion of my thesis required me to study the geographical boundaries of the district in which Pressley won. However, after searching online (e.g. Google Image search), I was unable to find a map of the Precincts and Wards that are in the district. So I enlisted the support of our research librarians. During one of my research consultations with the librarians, I learned that it would be possible to create the map I was looking for using the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) lab in the Olin Science Center on campus.

So with the help of Andrew Lopez, I contacted all of the towns in the 7th Congressional district in order to collect the GIS shapefiles we’d need to make the map. Once the shapefiles were collected, we contacted Professor Beverley Chomiak, Senior Lecturer in Geology and Environmental Sciences, who also runs the GIS lab, to ask for her assistance in putting a map together.

This map shows all precincts in the 7th Congressional District color coded with percentages of votes received by each candidate in the September 4, 2018 Democratic primary.

This map shows all precincts in the 7th Congressional District color coded with percentages of votes received by each candidate in the September 4, 2018 Democratic primary.

Professor Chomiak worked around the clock to assemble the map from the less-than-ideal files we had collected. Once the Wards and Precincts were assembled for the 7th District, the voting results were layered into the map and color-coded to exhibit where each candidate received the most votes during the Primary Election.

These maps have enabled me to visually analyze the election results in a new way, and they have also highlighted the significance of gerrymandering in the district, which expanded my research. As I continue with my thesis, I plan to continue to use GIS where possible, as it proved extremely helpful in increasing my data and analysis.

 

3rd Annual Library Prize Recipient – Dominic Lentini

April 23, 2018 / / 0 Comments

For the last three years, Shain Library has been awarding a Library Research Prize. Each student applicant must submit detailed information on their research process, and get faculty support for the submission. This is the essay/application for this year’s winner, Dominic Lentini. Dominic is a senior, and a double-major in International Relations and French. His paper was entitled: Media Framing, Violent Protest, and Race: A Comparative Analysis of The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times’ coverage of the Ferguson Protests.

Dominic Lentini ’18
Research Statement
Spring 2018

Describe how you came to choose your topic, specifically noting any pre-research that you did. What sources did you use in this pre-research? To what extent did you consult with librarians, faculty, or others? How did this pre-research lead you to your topic?

The process through which I arrived at my final topic was very time consuming. The first proposal I wrote was about protest repression, media coverage, and the police. For this, I first consulted the textbooks as well as other assigned readings for our class and I critically examined their bibliographies to help guide me in the direction of appropriate and related literature. This search involved exploring both theoretical literature to establish a framework for my analysis, as well as information on potential case studies and primary sources that could be used to take the existing research in a new direction. Using those sources as a springboard, I compiled a large list of peer reviewed articles and books on protest policing, policy, and organization, as well as on media coverage of protests.

However, as I began to read through those texts, consult with my professor, and meet with research librarians, I realized that what I had proposed could be three separate papers. While my research clearly started with a very large scope and a lot of energy was used to research topics that I did not write about, over roughly a month and a half of reading and evaluating sources, I eventually guided and narrowed my initial interests into a topic that was appropriate for the course: Media Framing, Violent Protest, and Race: A Comparative Analysis of The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times’ coverage of the Ferguson Protests.

Describe your process of finding information for your project. Note specifically the tools you used to undertake your research, as well as the specific search strategies you used within these tools. (Note: “Ebsco,” being an umbrella vendor, is not a specific enough response when identifying tools; listing the “library database” is also an unacceptably vague answer.

Specific tools include JSTOR, America:History & Life, Web of Science, etc., along with OneSearch, the new library system.)

As I described in question one, the first step in my process was exploring the sources used in the bibliographies of sources provided for my course. Following that, however, I used the library’s OneSearch, JSTOR, Political Science Complete, Google Scholar, and Lexis Nexis as the main tools for finding new articles and books. Within all of the databases I would do advanced searches with a variety of different search terms such as “framing,” “media framing,” “framing violence,” “framing race,” “framing protest” and many combinations within those terms. I would then read the abstracts to gauge potential relevance, and save every potential article to RefWorks so that I could later examine their
methodology, data, and conclusions. For anything I could not access through those databases, I used both the CTW network, WorldCat, and Inter Library Loan to access them. Additionally, within JSTOR I explored the utility of their text analyzer, which is in its beta mode.

For collecting my primary source newspaper articles, I initially used ProQuest Newspapers. I even contacted them, with the help of Andrew Lopez, to learn about how they code and sort their articles. For my data collection process, I used ProQuest Newspapers to search all articles published in certain date ranges based on set search terms in order to create frequency tables of article publication, and then to do content analysis of a selection of those articles. I realized, however, that some articles were coded inconsistently, and consequently double counted, which threw off all of the article counts. Thus, I did not end up using that particular database. Instead, I used the website search function for both The New York Times’ and the Wall Street Journal’s sites. Using the search functions within each newspaper required more manual work, and I even called the WSJ to get information about how their search feature functioned, but it ultimately provided me with the data I needed.

Describe your process of evaluating the resources you found. How did you make decisions about which resources you would use, and which you wouldn’t? What kinds of questions did you ask yourself about resources in order to determine whether they were worthy of inclusion?

I went through several different steps to evaluate my sources. Firstly, for my literature review, I only considered peer reviewed articles and books. Within sources that met that requirement, I would examine their research methodology as well as their bibliography in order to gauge the soundness and scope of their argument and conclusions. This process, however, still left me with more articles than I could use. Consequently, I made my final selection with the intention of laying a base to the framing literature, then additions and variations to that literature, and finally critiques to it. The ultimate goal was to paint a well-rounded picture of the literature.

The process for selecting background pieces for my case study was more challenging. For one, due to the slow process of academic publication, there does not exist a huge body of peer reviewed literature on the Ferguson protests. Consequently, most of the information on what transpired had to be gathered from newspaper and magazine sources. This, however, left me in a paradoxical situation because I was being pushed to use newspapers as the background for a paper in which I was arguing that newspapers paint a “framed” version of what transpired during the Ferguson protests. To try and mitigate this issue, I used a wide range of newspapers and magazines, as well as any quality academic literature I could find, in order to cross reference and evaluate the validity of my sources. While this did not totally eliminate the issue, it definitely reduced its severity.

The ICPSR Undergraduate Research Paper Competition: An Overview of the last 10 Years’ Winners

January 12, 2017 / / 0 Comments

The Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) will soon be reviewing submissions for its eleventh annual undergraduate Research Paper Competition (submissions are due by midnight PST on 1/31/2017). ICPSR is a consortium of academic institutions and research organizations that maintains an impressive data archive in the social and behavioral sciences, providing access to rich data sets on aging, arts, attitudes, criminal justice, economics, education, elections, political behavior, psychology, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields. Part of ICPSR’s role as a data steward includes providing a variety of educational opportunities for students and researchers to learn more about working with data. To mark the occasion of this year’s research paper competition, let’s take a look back at the last ten years’ winners.

As one of two ICPSR representatives at my institution (Connecticut College), my interest in the past winners is to see what kind of work they did so I can promote the competition at my home institution. That means I want to see what data are being used and who is using them. One thing that’s great about ICPSR is that every study has a unique ID number, so it can be easily discovered or shared among researchers. Unfortunately for my purposes, some of the information requested on the Entry Form for the competition, specifically the ICPSR study number, does not appear clearly in the public view of past winners.

This is frustrating because it makes it difficult to determine exactly what data are used in the winning papers. One has to open each paper individually and carefully search it. According to my review of all 26 previous undergraduate winners (there are numerous winners each year), more than a third do not cite the unique ICPSR study number (ID) in their references (e.g. of an ICPSR study number would be ICPSR31521, which when searched on the ICPSR site will take you directly to the data set). Another third of past winners do not cite it accurately (e.g. ICPSR02597 does not seem to exist and it is not obvious to remove the first 0 in order to find it). My findings indicate that only a minority of winning papers accurately cite the ICPSR study number (ID) for the data they used. A list of data sets used for each paper is documented in my review linked above.

ICPSR - studyID

In terms of who was using the data, my main interest is in which department the research was undertaken. Unfortunately again, there is neither class- nor department-specific information provided for the winning papers. Instead, the Entry Form asks applicants for their expected majors and/or minors upon graduation. For the most part, this information carries over to the public view of the winners, as represented in the chart below. But to give an example of when it does not, take a look at the 2012 second place RCMD winning paper, “Black Feminism and Hip Hop: A Cross-Generational Disconnect.”* With this winning paper we cannot tell what the student’s expected major was, and moreover we don’t know in which course or department the work was done, except that it was for Professor R. Khari Brown at Wayne State University. But why does the major/minor matter anyway? And if the work was done early in the undergraduate experience, the major could have changed between winning this award and actually graduating.

Besides, an excellent research paper could have been done in Economics, Sociology, or Political Science, for example, by an English or Religious Studies major. The major could therefore be considered irrelevant. What matters is the course and department in which the winning work was done. Such information would lend itself to thinking about ways of replicating or furthering the research in similar courses or departments at other institutions. It is nonetheless interesting to see that the greatest number of past winners for whom a major is given went on to receive degrees in Economics (28.1%), Sociology (18.8%), and Psychology (15.6%). Perhaps more interesting still, is that the next largest group of winners (12.5%) did not list a major; enough to change the results significantly depending on what they were.  

ICPSR - images

Another aspect of who is using the data that matters to me, is what sort of institution they come from. Fortunately, this information is clearly provided for all winning papers. It is not surprising that research universities account for half of the winning research. What is somewhat surprising and a little exciting for me is that Liberal Arts Colleges makeup about a quarter of previous  winners. This means that students at my institution should plan to submit their research and expect to do well, since so many of our peers already have.

ICPSR - institution

My takeaway from this brief review of past winners is that the winning work is impressive and exciting. I want my institution to focus on submitting papers to this competition in the years ahead. However, as a liaison librarian, I wish there was more clear information about what classes and in which departments the winners did their work. I also think it is not sufficiently clear exactly what data were used for many of the winning papers. Moving forward, I recommend that the Research Paper Competition Winners website clearly indicate each of the following for all winning papers:

  • ICPSR study number (ID) used
  • Class in which the research was undertaken
  • Department in which the research was undertaken

While collecting and sharing this kind of information about applicants could help attract interest in the ICPSR Research Paper Competition moving forward, I certainly hope researchers everywhere will take the occasion of this review to spread the word and get submissions ready for the upcoming deadline on January 31, 2017.

—Andrew Lopez

 

*The RCMD competition is for papers written on data held within the Resource Center for Minority Data archive and/or on a topic relevant to the focus of that archive.

Schedule a Research Consultation to Get Help Finding Sources

September 23, 2016 / / 0 Comments

The fall semester is well underway at Connecticut College and the reference desk in Shain Library is abuzz with questions and consultations about finding, evaluating, and citing scholarly sources on a wide variety of topics.

What follows is an overview of a recent transaction in which an undergraduate student wanted to find works by two renowned anthropologists. The takeaway is that sometimes when it seems like the library doesn’t have a book you’re looking for, be persistent (e.g. ask us); it could be just a few searches away.

An anthropology student contacted the library by using the Schedule a Research Consultation link on the library website. One can schedule a research consultation using the library mobile app as well, so it’s super easy to schedule an appointment with a librarian.  In her message, the researcher told us about her project and the kinds of sources she was hoping to find:

I would like help finding works by Franz Boas such as his 1907 essay “Anthropology”, or his 1911 book “The Mind of Primitive Man”, or his 1920 essay, “The Methods of Ethnology”. And such works by Lewis Henry Morgan as “Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family” or “Ancient Society” (1877)

We scheduled an appointment and met in person to work on this together. Some of the sources can be found using the library catalog online, but some of them are trickier and require a more advanced search technique.

Here’s a look at how we found them:

Franz Boas’ work called “Anthropology”:

  • Do an Advanced Search in the library catalog

    Screenshot of an Advanced Search in the library catalog.

    Screenshot of an Advanced Search in the library catalog.

  • Search for franz boas in the first search box (case doesn’t matter), and set the drop-down option to search Author Name
  • In the second search box, search for anthropology, and set the drop-down to search Title
  • This search produced 5 results, including one for the book Anthropology and Modern Life, which is what it turned out we wanted

Because we were not sure at first if “anthropology” is the title of a whole book or perhaps just an article or chapter, we started with an advanced search to see how the catalog would handle this information. The advanced search technique helped in this case, because we found what we wanted and quickly.

The next item of interest, The Methods of Ethnology, sounds more like a book title, so we thought we would find it with a basic title search:

  • Do a Basic Search in the library catalog

    Screenshot of a Basic Search in the library catalog.

    Screenshot of a Basic Search in the library catalog.

  • Search for the title (without the initial article, because library catalogs and databases do not search initial articles such as “a” and “the”)
  • Limit the search to within the Title field
  • Unfortunately there are no results for this title, so it is either something we do not have in our library, something that’s contained in another item or classified under another title, or maybe it’s not a book, but a journal article or conference presentation instead

Assuming the work in question is at least part of a book, we can redo the search in WorldCat, the catalog of library catalogs, where we can hope to find out for sure if it is in a book somewhere:

  • Under the Catalog search box on the library website, click on WorldCat

    Screenshot of search results in WorldCat.

    Screenshot of search results in WorldCat.

  • Do a keyword search like this: “Methods of Ethnology” Boaz
  • This search contains a unique phrase (“in quotes”) and a unique name (Boaz); all as keywords
  • We still get a lot of results, but notice the first few. They happen to be titles available at Connecticut College, because the name Connecticut College appears highlighted in green
  • Click on those records to find out more about them
  • When viewing the full record in WorldCat, one can see these various titles contain the chapter we’re after – The Methods of Ethnology / Franz Boas
  • Pick any of the titles that appear to contain the essay of interest, and return to the Connecticut College Library Catalog to find out where the book is located in our library

With the search techniques listed above, we found everything we needed in about 15 minutes. It was all available only a few steps away.

— Andrew Lopez

 

The Search for a Missing National Security Document: A Student-Librarian Collaboration

August 11, 2016 / / 0 Comments

We met in the Spring 2015 semester. The blog which follows provides an overview of our experience working together as student and librarian on a challenging research assignment. In the first place, it took a lot of work to figure out a focused topic that would be amenable to the assignment. Then we unexpectedly had to do a lot more research than expected to try to track down a Polish national security document that is often referenced in the literature, but nowhere to be found. Included in the blog is a select list of works consulted, as well as the names of some of the individuals and organizations we enlisted for support on this project.

 

The Assignment

 

For an introductory comparative politics course taught by Professor Caroleen Sayej, a 15-page research paper was assigned as a semester-long project. The research paper was to include a clear research question; an engagement with the scholarly literature relevant to one’s topic (the theory) in the form of a literature review; and the use of primary source materials (the data). Those materials could include a wide range of possible sources such as constitutions, speeches, military, trade, or demographic data, or even literacy rates. To be clear, the following discussion is a reflection of the process of finding a topic and primary sources, not of the writing process. While it is true that we collaborated in the process of finding sources, it is also true that Dominic navigated the writing process, as well as the synthesis of the research, entirely on his own.

 

The Research

 

Choosing a topic was a long and constantly changing process that brought student and librarian together early in February. Our first meetings were discussions of ideas for a topic to research and considerations of various book and journal sources to support that research. We started off thinking about political violence and failed states in general, but after consulting some sources, the topic changed to a comparison of US and EU security strategies—still a giant topic.

We corresponded regularly for several weeks exchanging ideas. It seemed that with nearly every email, or every time we met, the topic changed again. It was frustrating. On March 18, we read with interest a front page story from the Sunday New York Times, “Poles Steel for Battle, Fearing Russia Will March on Them Next.” This newspaper article marked a turning point after which the rest of the semester was spent focusing on questions dealing with the article’s main subject: Poland. This evolved into the final research topic: Polish Security and Defense Policy in the Post-Communist Era.

Dominic Lentini, presenting a poster of his research, 6 May 2015.

Dominic Lentini, presenting a poster of his research, 6 May 2015.

As part of this assignment required an examination of primary documents, we discovered that The National Security Strategy of The Republic of Poland (NSSRP), coupled with the annual address given by the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs (MFA), would be appropriate. A review of secondary literature revealed The National Security Strategy was issued periodically over the years after 1989, while the Annual Address was delivered yearly going back almost 100 years, as mandated by Polish law. The years from which the documents were chosen were 1992, 2003, and 2014. Analysis of these documents, we hypothesized, would shed light on the development of Polish security and defense policy in the difficult years of independence after communism.

Initially it seemed like finding the documents would be a trivial task, as the 2014 NSSPR and annual address were accessed in English with a single search on the Internet. That original search could not have been any more deceptive, however. The first obstacle appeared as soon as the two of us began to search for the documents for the 2003 juncture; also referenced in secondary sources. We quickly realized that the remaining documents were not nearly as accessible as they had been for the 2014 juncture.

 

The Impasse

 

This brings us to the most substantial impasse of our experience researching this topic. It is an impasse that continues to trouble us and one that might qualify as impossible research. A copy of the 1992 NSSPR in English, which is cited at least half a dozen times in our review of the scholarly literature, cannot be located. Now, please consider the following list of institutions with which we communicated in an attempt to locate a copy of this document:

 

  • Baltic Defense College (Estonia)
  • Connecticut State Library
  • Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Poland )
  • Ministry of Defense (Poland)
  • National Defence University (Poland)
  • NATO Multimedia Library (Belgium)
  • Polish Embassy in the United States (through which we had success in locating the 2003 NSSRP)
  • Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM)
  • United States Army War College
  • United States Embassy in Poland
  • Warsaw Security Forum (Poland)

 

Additionally we communicated with all of the following individuals:

 

  • Bert Chapman, Govt. Information, Political Science, & Economics Librarian, Purdue University
  • Jackie Granger, Brussels Liaison Officer, European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS)
  • Rick Lyman, Central and Eastern European Bureau Chief, The New York Times
  • Karolina Pomorska, Director of Studies MA European Public Affairs, Department of Politics, Maastricht University
  • Tomek Szlendak, Director of the Institute of Sociology, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń

 

We were successful in finding what we thought were two copies in Polish, but despite the fact that neither of us reads Polish, it was clear the two documents were different. This called into question their validity, and that aside, we did not have time to work with a translator even if it was the right document. The end of the semester was fast approaching.

 

The Takeaway

 

As a final thought, we’ll share a few points we both want to emphasize. This project would not have existed if it were not for student and librarian collaboration. Our collaboration was brought into being by a class and an assignment that made it necessary. Without classes, assignments, and discussions that have the potential to bring us together, students and librarians, we likely remain strangers. That we met countless times and came to rely not only on each other but also on the cooperation of other individuals and institutions tested our commitment, transforming this one research paper into less the product of one individual working alone than of a network of participants coming together through the research process, creating a sort of community where the was none.

 

Note About Works Consulted

 

A number of the works we consulted made reference to and/or included links to documents online that we were not always able to retrieve. So-called “link rot” is of course a serious problem with information on the Web. In some cases we were able to use the WayBack Machine from the Internet Archive to recover lost documents.

 

Works Consulted

Primary Sources

Annual Addresses

 

Address by the Minister of Foreign Affairs on the goals of Polish foreign policy in 2014. http://www.msz.gov.pl/en/news/address_by_the_minister_of_foreign_affairs_on_the_goals_of_polish_foreign_policy_in_2014

 

Address by the Minister of Foreign Affairs on the goals of Polish foreign policy in 2013. http://www.mfa.gov.pl/en/news/address_by_the_minister_of_foreign_affairs_on_the_goals_of_polish_foreign_policy_in2013_

 

The Minister of Foreign Affairs on Polish Foreign Policy for 2012. http://www.mfa.gov.pl/en/news/the_minister_of_foreign_affairs_on_polish_foreign_policy_for_2012?printMode=true

 

The Minister of Foreign Affairs on Polish Foreign Policy for 2011. http://www.msz.gov.pl/resource/66a3030d-07b7-4489-ab40-23b28b04df9e:JCR

 

Something from 2010. http://www.msz.gov.pl/resource/9f966390-1ccf-4c6c-80d7-63f6a4f42ff4:JCR

 

Links to annual addresses for the years 2002-2013 (2008 in Polish only) http://www.msz.gov.pl/en/foreign_policy/goals_of_foreign_policy/annual_address_2011/

 

National Security Policies

 

Polish Foreign Policy Priorities, 2012-2016. http://www.msz.gov.pl/resource/d31571cf-d24f-4479-af09-c9a46cc85cf6:JCR

 

National Security Strategy of the Republic of Poland, 2014. http://www.bbn.gov.pl/ftp/dok/NSS_RP.pdf

 

National Security Strategy of the Republic of Poland, 2007. http://www.sfpa.sk/dokumenty/pozvanky/481

 

National Security Strategy of the Republic of Poland, 2003. http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Publications/Detail/?id=156794&lng=en

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20130216140023/http://merln.ndu.edu/whitepapers/Poland-2003.pdf

 

Security Strategy of the Republic of Poland, 2000. http://web.archive.org/web/20020302162940/http://www.msz.gov.pl/english/polzagr/security/index.html

 

Something from 1992. https://www.msz.gov.pl/resource/a2467a85-fabe-4347-9fc6-cedc038e8832:JCR

 

http://www.koziej.pl/files/Strategia_RP_z_92_r.doc

 

Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives. http://www.msz.gov.pl/en/ministry/polish_diplomacy_archive/access_to_documentation/

 

Secondary Sources

 

An asterisk * at the beginning of a citation indicates the source makes reference to the 1992 National Security Strategy of the Republic of Poland even though we were unable to locate that document.

 

Asmus, Ronald D., Thomas S. Szayna, and Barbara A. Kliszewski. “Polish National Security Thinking in a Changing Europe: A Conference Report.” RAND/UCLA Center for Soviet Studies. Santa Monica, CA:

RAND Corp., 1991. Web. 5 May 2015.

This study from 1991 documents the situation in Polish security thinking on the cusp of the establishment of its new policies in 1992 and beyond.

 

*Bieniek, Piotr. Polish Defense Policy in the Context of National Security Strategy. Thesis. Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, 2006. Web. 5 May 2015.

This is an interesting document, discussing defense policy in the early 1990s, but no reference is made to the key documents of interest from 1992. A link to the National Security Strategy of the Republic of

Poland from 2003 is provided, but it no longer works. More useful are the references to other publications by the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs throughout the 2000s. Unfortunately, all of the URLs given

seem broken.

 

Chappell, L. “Poland In Transition: Implications For A European Security and Defence Policy.” Contemporary Security Policy 31.2 (2010): 225-248.

Interesting study, like Bieniek’s, but similarly its concerns stem from developments after the 2003 policies and more recent activity.

 

*Czulda, Robert, and Robert Los, eds. NATO: Towards the Challenges of a Contemporary World. Warsaw/Ludz: International Relations Research Institute in Warsaw; Department of Theory of Foreign and Security

Policy, University of Lodz, 2013. Web. 7 May 2015.

On pages 103-104 of this document there is a brief discussion of the transformation of Polish defense policy after the country’s independence in 1989. The Principles of Poland’s Security Policy and its Security

Policy and Defense Strategy of Poland both from 1992 are cited in English with Polish translations and  a URL is given for the document in Polish. It is not clear what the document says or in what capacity it can

be considered reliable. This report also contains numerous other references in English with Polish translations to later policies and good citations for finding them.

 

*Gorska, Joanna A. Dealing with a Juggernaut: Analyzing Poland’s Policy towards Russia, 1989-2009. New York: Lexington Books, 2010.

Arguing that accession to NATO was the primary objective in Polish foreign policy by mid-1992 (73), this book contains a reference to “The Principles of Poland’s Security Policy” and “The Security Policy and

Defense Strategy of the Republic of Poland,” adopted in November 1992 (p. 74-75). Although it does not exactly translate the names of these documents for us, in the notes it does say that for the full text one

should refer to “Założenia Polskiej Polityki Bezpieczeństwa; Polityka Bezpieczenstwa i Strategia Obronna Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej,” Przeglad Rzadowy, no. 12 (1992).

 

*Karkoszka, Andrzej. “Defense reform in Poland, 1989-2000.” Post-Cold War Defense Reform: Lessons Learned In Europe And The United States. Eds. Theodor Winkler and István Gyarmati. Washington, D.C.:

Brassey’s, 2002. 165-188.

With a thorough chronological breakdown of defense reform in Poland, this chapter identifies our “two doctrinal documents” from 1992: “The Basic Premises of the Polish Security Policy,” and “The Security

Policy and Defense Strategy of the Polish Republic” (169), albeit with slightly different syntax. Unfortunately, there are no citations and the chapter does not say where either document can be found.

 

*Koziej, Stanislaw. “Polish Defense Policy’s Evolution.” Trans. Aleksandra Rodzinska-Chojnowska. Poland’s Security Policy 1989-2000. Ed. Roman Kuzniar. Warsaw: Scholar Publishing House, 2001. 403-438.

This seems to be the most comprehensive and authoritative source outlining the context within which Polish policy was formed. Although it identifies “The Defense Doctrine of the Republic of Poland” (21 Feb

1990) as “the first Polish postwar document which defined and publicly proclaimed the fundamental elements of the national defense strategy” (405), it was apparently already outdated at the time of its

inauguration. In a footnote it also refers to a “Secret document” from 1985 which played a similar role. But the real beginning of the new era in Polish security thinking was marked by the acceptance of “two

key documents” from 1992 (411): The Principles of Poland’s Security Policy and The Security and Defense Strategy of the Republic of Poland. See appendix pp. 554-557. Note 16 on page 554 indicates that the

policies were sourced from Przegląd Rządowy, no. 12 (December 1992), pp. 73-81, which the NATO library says is short for Założenia polskiej polityki bezpieczeństwa. Polityka bezpieczeństwa i strategia obronna RP,

[w:] „Przegląd Rządowy”, nr 12/1992, s. 73-81, which we requested from the MFA on 5/5/2015.

 

*Latawski, Paul. “The Transformation of Postcommunist Civil-Military Relations in Poland.” Civil-Military Relations in Postcommunist Europe: Reviewing the Transition. Eds. Timothy Edmunds, Andrew Cottey and

Anthony Forster. New York: Routledge, 2006. 33-49.

This essay situates the “Security Policy and Defense Strategy of the Republic of Poland,” accepted in November 1992, squarely within the development of Poland’s policies in the early 1990s (p. 38-39).  A note

indicates that this policy was published in Wojsko Polskie: Informator ‘95 (Warsaw: Bellona, 1995), which is where we ultimately found our main copy of the security policy and defense strategy (p. 48, note 26).

 

Lyman, Rick. “Poles Steel for Battle, Fearing Russia Will March on Them Next.” The New York Times. 14 Mar. 2015. Web. 19 Mar. 2015.

This article marked a turning point in our relationship and Dominic’s conception of his research project.

 

*Marczuk, Karina. “Democratization of Security and Defense Policies of Poland (1990-2010).” Revista De Stiinte Politice 36 (2012): 80-93. Political Science Complete. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.

This is a good article with lots of interesting context, and it even mentions both The Guidelines for the Polish Security Policy and The Security Policy and the Defence Strategy of the Republic of Poland from 1992 (note

again the change in syntax; 84), but it does not say where the documents can be found.

 

Michta, Andrew. “Polish Security Policy: Keeping Priorities in Balance.” The Polish Review. Vol. 54. U of Illinois, 2009. 229-241. Web 20 Mar. 2015.

Interesting study, like Chappell and Bieniek’s, but similarly its concerns stem from developments after the 2003 policies and more recent activity.

 

Mutimer, David. “Strategic (Security) Studies.” International Encyclopedia of Political Science. Ed. Bertrand Badie, Dirk Berg-Schlosser, and Leonardo Morlino. Vol. 8. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Reference, 2011.

2541-2552. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 3 Mar.

Includes the sections “Security Studies” and “What is Security?” which offer a concrete definition of security studies and an overview of its development historically.

 

O’Donnell, Clara. Poland’s U-turn on European Defense: A Missed Opportunity?. Brookings. N.p., 6 Mar. 2012. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.

Interesting study, like Chappell, Michta, and Bieniek’s, but similarly its concerns stem from developments after the 2003 policies and more recent activity.

 

Pomorska, Karolina. “The Impact of Enlargement: Europeanization of Polish Foreign Policy? Tracking Adaptation and Change in The Polish Ministry Of Foreign Affairs.” Hague

Journal Of Diplomacy 2.1 (2007): 25-51. Political Science Complete. Web. 5 May 2015.

There is a lot of good narrative here about the history and development of the Polish foreign policy and the MFA, but there is no substantive discussion of their annual Addresses.

 

Sliwa, Zdzislaw, and Marcin Górnikiewicz. “Security Cooperation Between Poland and The Baltic Region.” Baltic Security & Defence Review 15.2 (2013): 146-82. Political Science

Complete. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.

Interesting contemporary regional assessment, with some useful remarks about the orientation of strategies and policy.

 

*Wojciechowski, Slawomir. “Dilemmas of Polish Military Strategy.” Strategy Research Project. Carlisle Barracks, PA: US Army War College, 2008. Web. 13 April 2015.

This document by a Polish Army Colonel says the “first written strategic paper was published [in 1992], called Security Policy and Defense Strategy of the Republic of Poland” (12). But the notes contain no

extra information about this source, except for the date 2 November 1992.

 

–Andrew Lopez and Dominic Lentini

Connecticut College Prize for Undergraduate Library Research

February 3, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Connecticut College Libraries is pleased to announce the launch of an annual award dedicated to recognizing excellence in the undergraduate research process. While it is becoming more common today for academic libraries to offer an annual research award, a preliminary review of Oberlin Group library websites indicates that Connecticut College Libraries would be only the 11th of our 80 peer institutions to offer such a prize.

 

Lib Prize at Tufts

A poster display of recent winners of the library prize at Tisch Library, Tufts University

Why aren’t there more prizes at Oberlin Group libraries? This may be because it is a more common practice among research universities – our own efforts at creating the Connecticut College Prize for Undergraduate Library Research were based on previous work undertaken at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Temple University. Other recent prizes of note could include those at Brown University or Tufts University, or the one established this year at University of Toronto Libraries. If there is a dearth of library research awards at smaller colleges, could it have something to do with the hands-on approach to academic work undertaken at these institutions? What if it stems from a sense of ambivalence about the role of library research in the digital age?

 

Questions like these have called our attention to the potential benefits of offering an annual award. The Connecticut College Prize for Undergraduate Library Research would play an important role among other awards offered at the College, because it focuses on the research process more than on the final product, and because it is open to all currently enrolled undergraduate students who have done research in some form for a credit course. When we looked at other awards at the College, we noticed that a good number are focused within departments or applicable only to a certain type of student doing a specific kind of work.

 

Sociology of the wild - foraging

A foraging tour of wild foods in the Connecticut College Arboretum

The research in question for the library prize can be a traditional paper, but it could also be some other form of work for a class, including (but not limited to) a video, a presentation, or an artistic project. It is not hard to imagine the brush strokes of a painting being informed by creative or painstaking research. However, work created for honors projects is ineligible for this prize. For more information about the honors award, see The Oakes and Louise Ames Prize.

 

By offering an annual prize, the library aims to foster appreciation for outstanding student research at Connecticut College. Citations and research statements for all winners and finalists will appear in the Digital Commons – Connecticut College’s Institutional Repository. Along the way, we hope this new form of recognition will help demystify the importance of libraries for student research. This includes encouraging the use of library resources and collections, as well as enhancing the development of library research techniques.

 

The library’s commitment to scholarship will be reiterated formally each year by recognizing student work that demonstrates rigorous, innovative, and/or unique approaches to engaging with library collections and resources.

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