Essentials for Today's Literary Research

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For those involved in reading and writing about literature today, I have identified four broad categories which I believe represent areas in which students need familiarity and literacy. By this I mean one should know what these things are, how to find them, and how to make use of them for researching literature. How literate are you in each of these areas?:

1. Traditional Scholarly Sources
2. Electronic and Online Sources
3. Social Networks
4. Digital Research Tools

Library Research 2.0

College students today need to be bilingual in their research. On the one hand, they need to know about traditional kinds of inquiry and the rich range of resources now available online and through databases. On the other, they need to know about research that is enriched by media, social discovery, and Web 2.0 resources and methods. One might call this newer approach "Library Research 2.0." Let me show you how it works.

As soon as I used that phrase, "Library Research 2.0," I immediately asked myself, "Who else might be thinking about this?" So I Googled "Library Research 2.0," and opened up a few tabs in my Chrome browser based on the top search results. One of these led me to a Google Doc presentation, "Library Research 2.0," posted by librarian Maria Accardi. Doesn't Ms. Accardi look friendly? It certainly was friendly of her to post her presentation rather than limiting its reach to the people at her university.