Randolph Stilson's
Evergreen State College
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This course will provide students with a solid core of academic research skills that will focus on the basics of library research. Students will learn to formulate their questions; gather data from both primary and secondary sources using traditional and electronic means; learn library terminology and information control systems including the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress classification codes; and explore research ethics. After exploring methods employed within the separate disciplines and how they are used in current research, students will present data following established conventions for their subject. A short formal research paper or project may be required.
Real and Virtual World Research: Through Spring 2003-2006
The course provides a core of skills requisite for doing academic research. We will examine research question formulation, data gathering within the scholarly disciplines, the value of interdisciplinary studies, library research methods both traditional and electronic, and the use of primary and secondary resources; good writing and use of statistical techniques in ethical presentation will culminate the experience.
Panic Attack!! A research paper is due by the end of the quarter! What do I do? Take the Doing Research course and learn the basics of selecting topics, choosing appropriate information sources, and putting it all together into a solid presentation. Students will become less stressed by research assignments as they learn how to recreate themselves as serious researchers.
Summer 2004 Second Session (cancelled). Faculty: Liza Rognas and Randolph Stilson
Building and Using the Universal Library is a one-quarter program devoted to the study of the library as a facilitator of human communication. The library has an exalted place in the narratives of democracy. We will examine its historical incarnations, its current state, and its extrapolated futures. We will pay special attention to how libraries (and their human users) might adjust to meet the needs of a world that is changing due to globalization and new communication systems.
Students will learn theory and practice in how organizations maintain the records that document their activity and gain assurance that records can be maintained systematically. The course will cover the theory of Records and Archival management including records surveys and retention scheduling, with a practicum during the beginning the sixth week.
A study of library history, library futures and the social and cultural influences of libraries on society as seen through literature.
Who am I? Why am I me? Questions that most people ask of themselves in the course of becoming an adult. This program will start with the question "What ancestry am I and how does it affect my daily life"? and will explore the cultural ramifications of what it means to be of specific ancestries and how those ancestral ties affect our current awareness.
We can all think of tools that are now only museum artifacts,... the typewriter,
vinyl records, etc. This program will explore the reasons why some human inventions
stand the test of time (the pencil) and others drop off the technological radar.
We will explore the nature of invention and why some technological impliments
are improved while others vanish from daily usage.