Assignment for Tuesday 20 May

For East Asian Studies majors:

• Write a paragraph or two summarizing (updating, expanding, refining) your topic, incorporating what your various searches have added to what you said before.
  Follow that with one or more paragraphs which summarize the essence of the information problem posed by your topic, including what information you need but don't have and/or haven't been able to find.

• Continue searching the Web for material that's really worthwhile for your topic, and report what you find and how you found it (what search terms, etc.). You are working toward a basic bibliography and resource guide, which will be the final product due on Tuesday 27 May. I'll provide details next week, but the essence should be an overview of important sources, formatted following the conventions of one of the standard bibliographic formats, and including books and journal articles and worthwhile Web resources.

For Seniors:

• Make a table showing all the courses you've taken at W&L and for each summarize briefly the information sources you used --if just a textbook, say so; if links to online articles via a Webpage, note that; if a coursepack at the Bookstore, note that; if materials were on reserve, note that; if there was a research paper, what tools did you use (Annie, online databases, etc.)?; if a librarian made a guest presentation in the class, note that. Make any other comments that would help me understand how each course fitted (or didn't fit) into the overall Information Ecology you've experienced in 4 years.

• Do some Web searches to familiarize yourself with the concept of an "information commons", and make a summary of what you found in a couple of paragraphs. Include any URLs that were especially rich/useful.