The research project that each students does for LIS 5703 is a project that is intended to give the student a useful, personal, practical experience with each of the components of searching and evaluating information brought up in the course's topical sessions.

The general category of this project is the production of what we call, generically, a research guide: a document that is intended to lead other scholars and students, who use the product, to the most useful, valid, reliable, and scholarly sources of information about some topical area.  Many LIS 5703 masters degree students use this project to study the research resources of their chosen disciplinary/professional area, or even more specifically, a sub-area within their disciplinary/professional area that particularly interests them.  Doctoral students have used this research project to get a firmer grasp of the "topography" of their dissertation study area.

A student's topic for the research guide is chosen in coordination with the instructors of LIS 5703.  It must be approved by the instructors as being . . .

• appropriate in content (a topic inside of the Social Sciences or their derivative professional areas, or significantly related to them in some mission-oriented, multidisciplinary, or interdisciplinary matter).

• appropriate in scope (a topic that can lead to an effective reporting strategy and format).

There are three techniques usually associated with research guides that can be chosen as models for a research guide, plus a fourth, which is usually a combination of the features of the first and the second techniques below:

The Pathfinder is the clear preference of the instructors, and what LIS 5703 students are expected to work on.  Unless there are good reasons to do otherwise, we expect that students will work use the pathfinder as the model for their final project.

A Pathfinder is a research guide with a specific purpose: it is "a guide that presents various types of resources in search-strategy order for a literature search on a particular topic." (Marshall University, CT109: Research on the Internet: Pathfinders)  A pathfinder doesn't have to annotate all of the individual pieces of literature and resources on the topic, but it does have to show its users the most useful "route of march" to locate pertinent information on the topic they are searching for themselves.  A Pathfinder will tell its users where the information exists (libraries, databases, organizations found on the web, governmental agencies, etc.), and typically what vocabulary access points (subject headings or descriptors) to use in searching particular databases and catalogs for information.

Obviously, there may be overlap between the purpose of the Pathfinder (to assist a user with a route of march to the intellectual resources that exist) with the formats of the Annotated Bibliography and the Bibliographic Essay.  But, at its core, the Pathfinder doesn't concentrate on describing the whole corpus of a topic's literature and resources; instead, it concentrates on telling a user where the literature and other resources exist, and how to get access to those pieces of literature.   Pathfinders, though, should use  the format of the annotation to report certain portions of its resources to its users.

• Monash University, Gippsland Library.  Marketing Pathfinder
• Duke University Library.  Women's Liberation Pathfinder
• Wyoming State Library.  Business Information and Resources Pathfinder
• Kanawha County Public Library, West Va. Alcoholism
• ERIC Clearninghouse.  AskERIC Infoguides

• James Thurber Pathfinder

The Pathfinder presents its user with a search-strategy "route of march" through print and online resources, showing the user where to look (and how to proceed to look within the resources presented).  The purpose of the author of the Pathfinder is to assist others in their search for information.

An annotated description of many of the resources identified in a pathfinder is normal and quite helpful to the users.

The Annotated Bibliography is a record-like format, organized variously--by format of resource, or alphabetically by author, or even chronologically.  What distinguishes the Annotated Bibliography format is how it relates information about each of the resources it lists: they each contain a description (a sentence or two or three or more) that is either "indicative" (talks about the resource, what it is, where it "fits" into the literature) or "informative" (paraphrases the findings or thesis of the authors of the item) of the contents of the item.  According to the Modern Language Association, the annotated bibliography contains . . .

brief descriptive or evaluative comments at the end of each citation. The comments can be written in the form of sentence fragments. An annotated bibliography can be ordered chronologically or by types of references or alphabetically.  -- A Guide for Writing Research Papers, Library, Capital-Community Technical College, Hartford, Conn.

Since the Pathfinder reflects a purpose and the Annotated Bibliography a format, it is possible to see one without the other.  Parts of a Pathfinder can use the bibliographic citations only, and the Annotated Bibliography can be produced for reasons other than guiding others to where information is located.  A student might work in the annotated bibliography format to tell a professor what literature the student read on a certain topic, for example.  Here is a typical annotated bibliography:

• David Chalmers, "Contemporary Philosophy of Mind: An Annotated Bibliography," Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona.

"A bibliographic essay is a narrative discussion, a review, of the literature of a topic. It is the equivalent of a conversation in which someone not only advises you about "what's out there" but shapes that raw material into a coherent survey of the materials available. Like all bibliographies, the bibliographic essay enumerates sources and, like an annotated bibliography, it describes and analyses them; it goes beyond performing these functions, however, to comparing, contrasting, and evaluating the relationships among works. A bibliographic essay thus draws a picture of the literature of a topic, and in so doing, unlike a list and like an essay, it tends to take a position and establish an interpretive point of view."   -- Haverford College Libraries, Reference Department, "The Bibliographic Essay."

The Bibliographic Essay is a second, more extended format of reporting.  It is in paragraph form; it is a written narrative, with bibliographic citations sprinkled into its narrative.  The bibliographic essay is frequently used in the category of literature Freides calls "research reviews."  If you have even seen a chapter in an annual review of research, or an article that reviews the year's work on some topic, you have seen the bibliographic essay format.  A student might wish to use an essay format to relate to an instructor, in narrative form, how the literature the student read is tied together.

The format of narrative, with citations within the narrative, can be used, at places, in a Pathfinder as well.  Some students decide to start each major section of a topically-arranged Pathfinder with a paragraph or two that describes what is to follow in the listing.  That section might start with a narrative that is, essentially, a small, confined, bibliographic essay in its format and style.

• Nermin Eren, "A Bibliographic Essay on Crimean Tatars."

• Thomas F. Glick,  "Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages," the Library of Iberian Resources Online.