Skip to Main Content

FYS 100-03: Beyond the Game: Issues in College Athletics: Step 2 - Background Reading

A collection of resources and research tips for FYS 100-03

Getting Started with Background Reading

As you develop your research question, you will find yourself needing some preliminary information to help you shape your outline as well as refining your searches.  Background reading is important, as it will help you figure out:

  • ...some keywords for searching.  Learning the language surrounding a particular topic will give you some starting points for searching databases to find books and articles related to your topic
  • ...if your topic is focused enough.  If your initial searches retrieve a ton of results with little common ground between them, then you will need to further narrow down your topic

Background information can come from many sources – books, articles, websites.  At this point in the process, not everything needs to be scholarly (though it does need to be credible).  While this will shift to scholarly sources once later on, for now we just need some credible sources to point us in the right direction.

 

Background information gives you starting. It is not the entire process, and you should be using what you discovered from the background in your next round of searching in places like scholarly article databases.

 

An infographic that describes the types of sources you can find while researching

Wikipedia has its place in the process as a general source of background information, but you have to use it properly.  Wikipedia is great for:

  • Finding background information – Look at the entries, embedded links, and bolded words for ideas and to learn the terminology related to your topic.  You can use these as search terms when searching library databases.
  • Studying the bibliography - The bottom of any page should list the sources used to create the page. They can point you to other sources (sometimes scholarly) on the topic.

And you want to avoid:

  • Citing Wikipedia - Like any other encyclopedia, you generally never cite such background sources in the final paper.  This includes Wikipedia.  However, you can take the information you learned in Wikipedia to a library database to find better scholarly sources.
  • Believing everything without scrutiny - While Wikipedia is fairly accurate, the content is created by anonymous users and there is no mandatory review process.  Trace what you learn in Wikipedia back to credible sources that represent the highest levels of evidence.

Book Catalog

Click on relevant subjects found under the Suggested Terms tab to browse materials that share similar subjects.  Some subjects that would be useful for your assignment are:

The book catalog can be a great starting point for background research.  Books and ebooks offer broader in-depth coverage of a topic and can provide an overview that can help you refine your topic.  This will help you to narrow down your research question and give you plenty of keywords you can use when searching for scholarly articles.

  • If you find a print book, you can show the call number to a librarian or student worker at the Circulation Desk.  They can pull the book for you.
  • Use AND to search for materials that contain all the keywords you enter.
  • Add OR in between words to search for variations, such as college OR university
  • Look at the Full Record tab to read the table of contents and summary, if available, and help determine if this book might be useful for you

"Need research help? Book an appointment with a librarian today"

Write Stuff Down!

As you are reading these background sources, write down any keywords that jump off the page.  This will help you out greatly when constructing searches for finding more articles.