Hack College

Think of Zotero (a free, open source, easy to use program) not only as a citation management tool, but a program that lets you compile and organizes research sources. I use it to collect sources (especially when starting a new project), organize topics within a particular project, and share them with others. Using zotero from the very beginning of a project will help you work smart and efficiently – and it generates bibliographies automatically!

Why use Zotero?

Installing and Configuring a Zotero Library

1. Create a free Zotero account
   • Go to zotero.org and select Register (upper right hand corner)
   • Fill in the registration information and verify the account via your email
2. Install a library
   • Go to zotero.org and click on Download Now
   • Choose Zotero Standalone
     • Also install a browser extension (below) to link your library with your preferred browser
       

3. Configure your library
   • In your Zotero library, click on the gear icon and select preferences ->sync:
     

• Enter in your account information
• Click the Green sync button in the upper-right hand corner

4. After you’ve synced Standalone and your browser, try the following:
   • Go to a library database and locate an article
     • Save to Zotero with your browser extension
   • Go to Standalone and create a folder
     • Drag your new item into this folder
   • Check to see if Zotero grabbed the full text or a screenshot of your item
   • Add a note or tag to your item

For more questions visit the library’s Zotero Guide: http://davidson.libguides.com/zotero or e-mail askalibrarian@davidson.edu

(Updated 29 Aug 2017 for Office 365).
One of the benefits to going to a liberal arts college is going straight to professors for help or advice. But outside of office hours, which should be posted on their website or in front of their office, how do you know when they are in? Other than teaching class, as faculty we spend a good chunk of our time going to various meetings, working in laboratories or libraries, and sometimes eating lunch.

One way to find out when faculty are available for individual meetings is to search through their schedule; many universities and colleges (like Davidson) now require their faculty to keep their Outlook calendar (or whatever office suite is used) up to date. The following instructions are specific to Davidson, but this functionality in Outlook is available to many others.

You do not need Outlook set up on your computer; as Davidson students, you can access Outlook through your web browser. Here are step-by-step instructions for using Outlook to stalk your professors. If you don’t feel like watching the video, you can read the instructions below the video.

1. Go to your Outlook account, which at Davidson is “http://webmail.davidson.edu” (or “outlook.davidson.edu” or “office365.davidson.edu”) and sign in.
2. Once you are logged on, you will either see the Office 365 web app or your outlook email (depending upon how you log in). But click the box icon on the upper left corner of the webpage and click on Calendar.
   
3. Once you’ve clicked on Calendar, you will see your own calendar (which is probably empty, unless you use Outlook calendar to organize yourself). Then click new to set up a new meeting, and you will then see a new window pop up. Look for People and type in the name of the faculty member you want to meet (type in their surname). As a shortcut, you can type their userid (e.g., erlozada) and the faculty member should come up. Select the right person.
   
4. On the right column that says Suggested times, you will see the date, duration, and a listing of times. If you’ve pre-selected a time, you can look in the People column to see if the faculty member is free. Otherwise, you can scroll down the Suggested Times column and see times that are open by looking for the meeting icon (see the picture below). You can change the date of the meeting by clicking on the date in the Suggested times column. Note: Times that are blank mean that time is not open; open times are those with the meeting icon.
   
5. Once you found a time when your faculty member is free, you can either request the time by Outlook by selecting the start and end time at the top of the window and sending a meeting request or just note the time and date that is free and email the professor about meeting at that time. Double-check that you are on Eastern Standard Time. I’ve noticed some students have requested times when they think I am free based on Pacific Standard Time (which I believe is the default setting for Office). You can check this by clicking on settings (the gear), options, General, and then checking “Region and time zone.” Here’s a quick video to show you how to change your time zone settings:

This is the best way to pin down a time for an individual meeting with a professor. It’s much easier for your faculty member to schedule something like this, instead of sending two or three emails back and forth listing possible times to meet.
Office hours are also good times to meet, but that’s first-come, first-serve. With a scheduled appointment, you won’t have to wait.

You are sitting in a cafe with a group of friends, talking about a particular issue in depth for about 30 minutes. Because you are on a caffeine buzz, you’ve covered multiple angles and multiple arguments about this issue, and while not everyone completely agrees on a particular perspective, everyone is eager to move on to the next topic (before ‘Hitler’ gets brought in to elevate the argument to absurdity). All of a sudden, some noob who just walked into the cafe and overheard a bit of your conversation, tries to join the conversation by saying something that someone had said fifteen minutes ago.

We do literature reviews because no one wants to be that irritating noob.

A literature review provides an overview of the published information about a particular ethnographic subject area or a body of specialized theory. Ethnographic subject areas (i.e., sports in Asia, Latino immigrants in the United States) specifically look at a particular cultural phenomena in a particular place, while specialized theory (i.e., sports and society, diaspora ethnicity) will address similar questions but in different ethnographic regions. Literature reviews can contain both, especially if your topic has been widely written on.

Like an academic research paper, it features a particular argument – but unlike an ethnographic research paper, the focus of your analysis will not be a particular social group or cultural practice, but a synthesis of what other social analysts have said. It is a useful step in the research process, because by reviewing the literature, you will be able to:

• Clarify the focus of your research by narrowing down the issues involved in your research
• Contextualize your own thinking with what others have said on the subject
• See what other questions you need to address
• Construct a deeper analytical framework for your project

A good literature review is comprehensive, in that a wide array of different perspectives and approaches are brought into discussion. It is also current, in that it contains the most up-to-date publications on your topic. A good literature review is analytical, in that it breaks down the field into categories of approaches, so that different themes or research questions become salient.

Like any prose, a literature review has an introduction, body of text, conclusion, and bibliography. The introduction features your take on the literature that looks like a thesis statement – it argues that a specific approach (which could be a combination of a number of different approaches) is the best way to understand a particular social group or cultural practice. The body of the literature review contains summaries and synthesis of the literature in your field, and is organized either thematically (the categories of approaches, often the best way to present the literature), chronologically (showing how seminal authors have structured the discourse within a field), or methodologically (arranged by research methods). Not every work needs to be summarized, if it is part of what you see as a thematic group – but it should be cited. You should try to avoid direct quotes, unless they are pivotal in establishing a theme. Lastly, it should include an extensive bibliography, with each citation showing up somewhere in the text.

Your literature review is designed to help you understand the wider context of your project. Depending upon your project, your review can either be of the “ethnographic specific” type or “specialized theory” type. Think of this as a draft of your final paper – much of it can (and should) be included in it. There is no specific limit on the number of citations, but I cannot see one that has fewer than five citations adequately covering your topic; don’t forget to include, if applicable, readings from the class. Hint: articles are better than books, unless you find the exact book on your topic (both ethnographically and theoretically).

Other resources on literature reviews:

• https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/literature-reviews
• Writing Like an Anthropologist

I regularly teach “Theory in Anthropology,” a required seminar in the history of anthropological theory, and over the past decade have found that undergraduates consistently do not understand how to use theory. Students have a tendency to focus in on their particular research hypothesis (which is good!), doing narrow literature searches and re-applying theories and methodologies that people in that particular field have used. The problem with this approach is that this is not expansive – theory can be used to push boundaries of understanding, which often happens when theory in one particular area is applied to another (and then tested out in the field to see if it does work in explaining a particular social or cultural phenomenon).

We (anthropologists, social scientists, academics, etc.) use theory because it helps us see things that are hidden or less obvious, helps us “predict” possible outcomes or patterns, and helps us ask the right questions in the right way (i.e., methodology). Theory also makes our work interesting to others; while I am interested in a particular happenings in a specific place, theory helps make my work applicable to others working on different topics in different places. For anthropologists in particular, theory should be grounded in empirical reality – things that we see in the fieldsite. Here is a quick “how to” guide on using theory, using a particular example from a student’s interest.

In this case, after seeing extensive media coverage on the high incidence of sexual assault in the military, the student was interested in finding out why this is so (and ways to solve this problem). In talking about the particular issue, we came up with this particular theoretical approach that will serve as her first draft of the theoretical issues involved in this problem.

Essential Tools (mostly free)
(Updated, 16 March 2017)

Technological literacy (something I really need to define later) is essential to getting things done in today’s mediated world. There are a lot of useful applications out there that will cut back on the tears or punched walls late in the semester. Below are some of the programs that I use everyday to make my life easier, or at least to make it possible for me to cram in more things to do. For more tips, check out Gina Tripani‘s Upgrade Your Life and/or subscribe to Lifehacker. If you are a professor and want more tips, also check out the Chronicle column ProfHacker.

Evernote
This is my collection of everything – and I do mean everything. I use Evernote to clip articles from the web, store downloaded pdf’s that can be easily searched, pictures from the web, receipts from internet purchases, and notes that I take throughout the day. I type my fieldnotes into Evernote, for easy searching and backing up. You can install Evernote on multiple gadgets (I have it on all my PC’s, my tablet, and my smartphone), and sync them between all the gadgets, as well as access them in the cloud. Because of my usage, I did upgrade to the paid version, but you can start off with the free one. One of the best things about Evernote is that it records the URL and date that you clipped the article or picture – this is essential for later citation. I also use tags in Evernote to quickly categorize clippings, but the search feature in Evernote is also pretty powerful.

Dropbox
This is the way that I back up essential files. The best thing about Dropbox is that it requires no thought or effort; once Dropbox is installed on a computer, then it automatically syncs everything in the folders that you choose to add to Dropbox. You can also share folders with other people, and like Evernote, you can access everything in your Dropbox using any web browser. You can also install Dropbox on other gadgets, such as tablets or smartphones, but I use that only to download files from Dropbox (instead of synchronizing folders) because of the more limited storage on gadgets.

Google Reader
There’s a lot of stuff to keep up with – for me, news about China, Coastal/Marine Environmental Studies, science fiction, motorcycles, and lots of other subjects that are near to my academic research or dear to my heart. I try to keep up with everything using Google Reader, which I tailored by subscribing to my interests and then dividing into sub-sections by topic. If I find something interesting, I clip the page to Evernote. If you don’t like the look or capabilities of Google Reader, you can actually use many other applications to view your RSS feeds in Google Reader. I use Flipboard on my tablet to zip through new articles. Here’s Prof. Hacker’s take on Google Reader:
Using Google Reader to Streamline Your Reading.

Alas, Google Reader was put to pasture by Google on July 1, 2013. Now I use Feedly.

Feedly
There’s a lot of stuff to keep up with, to be a proper academic. For me, that includes news about China, food and environmental studies, science fiction, motorcycles, productivity tools, and lots of other subjects that are near to my academic research or dear to my heart. I try to keep up with everything using Feedly, which I tailored by subscribing to my interests (using RSS – but just follow the Feedly directions) and then dividing my many feeds into sections by topic. Any new additions to a website (including news sites), Facebook pages, etc. show up on my Feedly app (which I can access on my phone, tablet, or computer); after seeing the headline, it automatically marks it as read, and I can easily scroll through hundreds of new articles. When I find something worth keeping, I save the page to Evernote. You can even add a google search to Feedly – when new items in a Google Search are found, they appear in your Feedly.

Notepad ++
When I get a new computer, one of the first things that I load onto the computer is Notepad++. I use it when going through html code, cut-and-paste operations from websites, and any other time when I just want plain text and do not need text formatting.

Small notebook

USB Harddrive and Thumbdrives