Balancing the role of scholar and teacher means constantly reminding oneself of the goals of each role.
The research skills I practice with my graduate students are different than the ones I present to our introductory students. Like most disciplinary pursuits, information literacy is best learned across time and context with increasing levels of difficulty and nuance.
Start with a question or a problem and go looking for ALL of the answers or solutions. Don't limit yourself to a predetermined thesis. Allow those that came before you to guide you. You're entering a conversation that began long before you started asking questions. Be humble.
Everywhere. That's not fair. Everywhere is overwhelming, but definitely in multiple places. As an undergraduate, cherry-picking a few sources from one place might have worked okay. As a graduate student, however, the goal is different. You are trying to become an expert in an area of scholarship which means locating the depth of what has been written. This requires time and ingenuity.
Journal articles, books, magazines, and newspapers in almost every subject area.
Lower-level undergraduates generally believe they must start their research with an answer and a definitive thesis. They developmentally do not yet see research as a learning process. Helping them view research as an inquiry process that shapes their topic is incredibly helpful, but can be incredibly difficult.
In three very specific places. At this level, we want to help students find general resources, and the best places to find those are in our two big multidisciplinary databases and our library catalog. Sure, we have more resources than that, but you don't want to cause overwhelm my offering too many choices.
Journal articles, books, magazines, and newspapers in almost every subject area.
