Assessment Task 2: Library Research Task: How is this art? How is this theatre?
In conjunction with the library class in week 3, you are asked to begin to consider theatre made in diverse theatre spaces. Choose one of the following forms: what do you find exciting/interesting/challenging about this specific field of practice?
Provide
N.B: An annotated bibliography includes your own notes on how the book/journal/website has helped your research or might help someone else’s (or not). Summarise and assess the source and comment on its style (is it scholarly or popular?) its reliability, and whether it is current or dates back some years.
Assessment criteria:
N.B. Always check the marking rubric linked in the assessment two section of Moodle.
Planning your search is critical to obtaining the most relevant and appropriate sources of scholarly information for your assessment.
Start planning your search by:
You may need to alter your search terms if you don't find what you need.
Keywords | Alternative terms |
EcoART | ClimART, "environmental art", "climate change" |
Children / young people | "young adults", adolescence, adolescents, teenagers |
"immersive theatre" | "immersive theater", "audience participation" |
Now use Boolean operators to connect your search terms.
Use OR to combine all the terms for the same concept: teenagers OR adolescents
Use AND to combine terms from different concepts: "applied theatre" AND prison
Use quotation marks to search for a phrase: "immersive theatre"
Use an asterisk to retrieve variations on a word: theat* finds theatre, theatres, theater, theaters
Use brackets to group all terms from the same concept together
Watch the following video to learn more about Boolean operators
When you put it together:
theatre AND (children OR teenagers OR adolescents OR "young adults")
ecoart OR climart OR "environmental art"
(community OR cultural) AND performance*
Please note, these are examples intended only to demonstrate a search strategy. It does not include all possible variations. You will probably need to alter your search terms as you go.
Suggested databases for this assessment are:
News databases
I know, I know, we told you not to use Google for your assignments
However, Google has some great features for searching for organisations, government reports, policies, statistics and other useful documents. (But please do not rely on using Google for all your references.)
You can also:
"performance art" site:vic.org.au daterange:2014-2016 filetype:PDF
You can also use parentheses (round brackets) and OR for alternative terms (works best at the end of the search line):
"performance art" site:vic.gov.au daterange:2014-2016 filetype:PDF ("performance art" OR dance)
site:vic.gov.au daterange:2014-2016 filetype:PDF "performance art"
We can also exclude a search term from our results (similar to using NOT in a database) by putting a hyphen or minus sign in front of the word (or phrase in quotes). For example, to exclude results that include the word Melbourne, we can use -Melbourne
site:vic.gov.au daterange:2014-2016 filetype:PDF "performance art" -Melbourne
Warning: excluding results that have the word Melbourne will also exclude results that have Melbourne and rural details, or Melbourne and your area of interest.
This might not be what you want.
Click the Settings option (may be showing on its own but more likely to be under the three-line menu icon)
Click on the Library links option, and search for federation
Tick the checkbox for Federation University Australia, and (important!) click the Save button.
If you are logged into a Google account (GMail, etc), this setting will be saved permanently.
Otherwise, you might have to redo this setup every time you restart your web browser to use Google Scholar.
Depending on your topic, this might make many more full-text resources available in your Google Scholar results, resources that the Library has paid for.
Start in Google Scholar. Search for a topic. Here we have searched for:
("climate change" OR "global warming") AND coffee AND agricultural
Use the links on the left to limit results to the last 5 years.
When using Google Scholar, see the CRAAP test (below) to evaluate each article before relying it as a reference.
To read results from Google Scholar, look for either an open access link on the right-hand side, or (if you have added Federation University as instructed above) use the Find it @Federationlink to connect to material provided via the Library.
After clicking the buttons and reading the sections above, try searching Google Scholar yourself:
Google Scholar - journal articles and other material (as detailed above, you can link Google Scholar to the Library's paid full-text subscriptions)
Google Scholar has a citation feature, but always check the citation it supplies. It may be incorrect (no upper case letter to start a subtitle, for example) or incomplete (missing the DOI, for example).
Click the quotation mark icon to pop up a window (unless blocked by pop-up settings in your web browser) containing a reference list entry several referencing styles and links to export formats for bibliographic management software (e.g. EndNote).
Underneath many articles in your Google Scholar results will be a Cited by link - this points to newer articles that have used the article in their reference list. Some of these (but not all) may be on the same topic, so it can be another way of finding newer relevant articles.
This can also be a rough guide to how much impact an article has had - articles with more impact tend to be cited more.
When was this source published?
How old are the references and data used?
Has this source, or its data, been updated?
Does this type of information get updated?
Is there likely to be more recent information available elsewhere?
Is this information relevant to your assignment? Is there likely to be better information?
Is this aimed at the correct audience?
Who wrote it? What are their qualifications?
Where do they work? Who do they work for?
Are they likely to have a good understanding of this field?
Is the information reliable?
Can you find the original source?
What is the quality of the presentation? Are there significant errors?
Do the conclusions match the data?
Have all sides been considered?
Why has the article been written?
Is there any obvious bias? Is the author or their employer likely to get a benefit out of the recommendations?
Is it recommending a particular course of action or therapy? Does the data support this? Are any alternatives considered?
The following PDFs are helpful for creating your assignment.
FedCite is the one-stop shop for all your referencing needs. In Performing Arts you need to use Chicago Note 17th ed.