Macaulay honors students in Prof. Sissel McCarthy’s news literacy class took a deep dive on how to find both primary and secondary sources for their final research paper with media studies librarian Tony Doyle.
Students will be writing about how they use their news literacy skills to find and evaluate news stories about a top issue of the day, like Medicare for all or arming teachers in schools.
The final research paper will showcase their critical thinking skills and their ability to come to an informed opinion on a complex issue.
Doyle shared several research tips with students and demonstrated how keywords “and”, “but” “*” (asterisk) and “!” (exclamation point) ” save time.
He also warned students that too many search terms will narrow your results considerably and that less is usually more when working with databases.