Background Research in the Library

1) Electronic Reference:  

    This week, I am continuing to broaden my topic horizons by simply continuing the background research. My first task was to check out an electronic reference from the university library system. One quick look at all that our library had to offer could have proven quite overwhelming. (I can see that there are plenty of resources for serious research, although I will likely want to consult with a research librarian for help in making adequate use of it all.) Happily, a shorter resource suggestion list was provided for me. After checking out each of the suggested resources, I decided to utilize the Britannica Online reference source because it is actually just an online version of what I used for research when I was a kid. The familiarity was somehow comforting. 😊

    In keeping with my chosen research topic, I entered Spanish Flu into the search bar and the heading "Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19" came up. Since this was actually one of the alternative research terms I found with last week's background research assignment, I chose that article. The article is quite short, but one new thing I discovered about the pandemic was that many people died within two days "after the first indications of the flu".  There were several linked subtopics in this article. One was "influenza type A, sub-type H1N1. Another was World War I--and I think I would specifically look for illnesses of World War I. Finally, the term pneumonia was linked within the article. Most of my possible research questions actually came from the images within the article. Why was this pandemic originally referred to as the Spanish Flu? How did the influenza pandemic of 1918 spread? What was unusual about this influenza virus? Some words and terms I could potentially use in future searches are as follows:

DISTINCTIVE: H1N1 Virus

BROAD:  pandemic; influenza virus

NARROW:  Spanish Influenza Pandemic, Influenza Pandemic of 1918; Influenza A

RELATED:  epidemic, influenza B

    I confess, I found the organization of this article to be much neater and easier to look at than the Wikipedia article I looked at last week. It is concise and has quite basic information on this topic. Links to related Britannica articles are imbedded in the article and there are links to several additional articles from other sources as well as several images provided.  Very few changes have been made to this article since it was published, and those changes seem to be pretty minor. However, this article was much shorter, had no contents list, and contained far less information than could be found in the Wikipedia article. I had access to a great deal more cited resources through the Wikipedia article as well.  After comparing the two articles, I definitely notice that I can come up with more possible research ideas from the Wikipedia article than the Britannica article. Both articles take a similar approach, with the Britannica article being very basic in nature. I feel like this would have been a good place to help me decide whether my topic idea might be interesting to pursue, but the Wikipedia article would have been a better background research resource. Particularly for generating more ideas for research questions and words/terms.

2) Book from Search It, the Library's Catalog:

    I found an interesting title for a book that could provide some good general information about the Influenza Pandemic of 1918. It is entitled "Very, Very,Very Dreadful; The Influenza Pandemic of 1918". Some of the subheadings provided with the description of the book are: Influenza Epidemic 1918-1919; Influenza--History--20th Century; Epidemics--History--20th Century; and Disease--History--20th Century. Besides being a non-fiction book, the description also tells me that this will not be an overly challenging book to read as it is a young adult book found in the juvenile section of the library that has it. This is a recent book, published in 2018 and this is the first edition. The summary tells me that I will be able to answer several of the possible questions listed above after reading this book. If I want to check out this book, I will need to submit a request for it via the Search It website. This book is currently checked out, and someone else has also requested it, so I know it could take some time before I would be able to actually get my hands on it. It looks like after I request the item, it would be sent to me once it becomes available. But the site states 7-10 days.  However, I could request it from four other summit libraries listed below the request link. 

3) eBook from Search It:

    The first eBook was the most generally applicable. It is entitled, "The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919; Perspectives from the Iberian Peninsula and the Americas". There are thirteen subject headings for this book. Each subject heading can be downloaded in a separate PDF file which is a nice little detail. A few sample subject headings are:  1--The Great Evolutionary Potential of Viruses: The 1918 Flu as a Paradigm of Disease Emergence    12--The Gendered Dimensions of Epidemic Disease: Influenza in Montreal, Canada, 1918-20.  A few details I was able to discover from the book's description is that it was published in 2014 and seems to deal with the pandemic primarily in South America. 

4) Reflection:

    Again, it seems that a great place to get very basic information on a possible topic idea would be an online encyclopedia reference such as the Britannica source I looked at today. It was very neatly organized and simple enough to inspire additional ideas and get some new words and terms for further research without overwhelming me with information. I think a good Wikipedia article would enhance this level of background research and would be my next step in the research process. From Wikipedia, I think I would move to the Search It function on the library homepage to see what is available under eBooks that I might be able to download immediately for viewing. Since this is still just the background stage of my research, I feel I would need to be careful to not get too burdened with finding details at this point. Too many details before really deciding on a good research question could cause me to end up "in the dip". I think at this point, it would be ok to browse the possibilities of requesting an actual book, especially if time is an issue in obtaining resources for my research project.