I, myself, have never done original research. I have not had a project or paper where I have had to do research for my own. Original research is different from library research in many ways. One way is that original research often includes conducting surveys, experiments or compiling data. You are observing that population for yourself instead of taking someone elses word for it like you would be doing for library research. You also have to identify assumptions and build a research question for those assumptions.
Library research can guide or assist original research by giving ideas for your own research. For me, it takes a lot of time for me to come up with a topic for a paper or project. But if I do research ahead of time I am able to get ideas from it and come up an idea for my own.
Some cons of library research often include too wide or searches. Too many results are given for a search and most of the time they aren't useful enough to use. They are very broad rather than being specific enough to use for research. On the other hand, that con can also be a pro! By getting a lot of result for your research your results are unlimited. For a person like me who likes to change their mind a lot, seeing different angles of a topic helps me explore my options when writing a paper. I am able to change my mind to a topic that works better for me.
For both types of research, critical thinking skills must be involved. For example, evaluation of sources is very important. You must be able to decipher creditably of authors and their research. You must also have to be able to interpret that information and ask yourself, "Is this information relevant? Will it help in my overall goal? Can I use this information and will it help make my paper accurate?" These critical thinking skills are very important.
In my opinion, creditability is most important in both original research and library research. With so much information out there in library research, you must have a fine eye when telling which is creditable and which is not. On the other hand, creditability is just as important in original research when figuring out who to interview, survey or question when conducting research of your own. You may think you have a creditable source but by not doing your research on them, it could make your whole study inaccurate.
Hi Morgan,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your post on the similarities/differences of library and original research. You have hit the nail on the head.
The other thing about original research is that you can study a human population firsthand, and find out that everything you have read that others have written may no longer be correct! This happens a lot in the field of education research, as more K-12 teachers are embracing new forms of instructional technology in the classroom, and this affects the way teachers deliver content and the way that students may learn the content. As the instructional technology changes, the studies have to be conducted all over again, because the teaching and learning environment changes and produces different results.
Technology is also changing the way that people look for information. All of the studies about how people involved in the "coming out" process look for LGBT-related information have to be redone, because most of them were conducted before the Internet and EBook age. So what was correct a few years ago may no longer be correct today.
And this is what makes life very stressful sometimes--the fact that human society often has little control over technological change, and technological change strongly influences how we think, behave, and develop our culture.
Sincerely,
Professor Wexelbaum