Deciphering Sources

The Type of Sources

For the essay, all FCO105 students were instructed to use at least three (3) scholarly/primary sources, and then a specified quantity of additional secondary sources that can be used to further the discussion the essay was designed to create. For Swartz's essay, he used the required three (3) scholarly sources, which were all journal articles accessed through the York College Library's Databases, and three websites he had found that were beneficial to his research. In total, Swartz utilized six (6) sources to create his essay.

How to go about utilizing the sources found

Many find research to be a long, boring, tedious process. Some struggle to find sources that are even remotely close to what they're trying to research. In Swartz's mind, it's not about the sources you're trying to find, it's about using the sources you've found. In other words, some sources may not be exactly what you expected to find when searching, but that doesn't mean you can't use it. You can still pull information from the source to further your discussion, add more facts and statistics to your research, and strengthen your argument (if you're trying to make one in an essay).

With six sources used in a 9-page essay, Swartz knew that the sky was the limit to using all of the sources he had obtained during his research process.

Here is an example of how Swartz went about doing much of his research. He obtained and printed out the journal article through the databases from the College's Library. He read through them, underlined, highlighted, and was able to take the information and apply it to the essay.

The article seen at left is about a suicide prevention campaign the VA enacted in 2009-2010. This article focused on a study that was conducted to observe the potential changes in the number of calls that come through to the VA's suicide hotline, and other associated national crisis lines.

Deciphering Information. (2016, February 12). Retrieved May 1, 2017, from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/deciphering-information-ian-dunbar

Detective Clipart. (n.d.). Retrieved May 2, 2017, from http://www.clipartkid.com/detective-cliparts/

Highlighted and Underlined Journal Article [Personal photograph taken in York, PA]. (2017, May 2).