To begin the Heel Tapper Pathfinder Tutorial...
We'll need a subject that will be narrowed to a topic and a process to follow that touches on some of the basics of looking for information online and offline. It's important to identify the parameters of a project as early in the process as possible. Knowing what you know and deciding how far you want to go on a topic helps you to make up your own mind on questions that are bound to arise such as when is a piece of information too superficial and when are you working harder than necessary? It doesn't take long to realize that too much information is just as problematic as too little so learning how to determine what you need for a given application is an important skill.
Looking for Information can range from the cursory and superficial to detailed, in depth analysis. Seeking data, wading through information, working with knowledge, and the art and science of making meaning of it all is a learned skill that improves with practice.
It's a matter of degree so knowing your parameters, objectives, and goals, keeps you on track. People who are new to information searching may worry about setting guidelines too early but the structure actually proves to be the means to reaching meaningful creativity and freedom on a project. In this example of information seeking by design, the assignment is considered to be an essay of approximately 3,000 words with a work cited sheet or a bibliography.
The subject...
Simply stated it's
" America's early contributions to the evolution of fishing vessels "
The topic...
Simply stated it's
" Heel Tappers in pre-revolutionary America "
Putting an oar in the water...
Here's a good way to casually get started on thinking about your subject. It will help to know some of the ideas that relate to the basic material being considered. For example, for the first century or two of United States history, Americans on the North Shore of Massachusetts were shoemakers as well as farmers and fishermen. If you are looking for information about early American history, there is a great place to consider first.
Visit the Library of Congress' American Memory page for a gateway to rich primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States. The site offers more than 7 million digital items from more than 100 historical collections.
NAVIGATION TIP
Use the BACK button on the upper left corner of your browser. If you don't see it, don't give up. Web tools are always being " improved " Memorizing commands and icons usually doesn't help you very much in the long run. Increase your flexibility so you can move through a range of software and application designs by thinking in terms of what you want to do instead of trying to remember and following specific cues. Think in terms of the function you want to do and take a look to see terms and pictures that relate to the concept. For example, after looking at the picture in the next paragraph you'll want to return to this page. If there was no BACK button you'd look for other directional terms like GO or for something to do like VIEW and follow the path that leads back.
You can probably guess what an early American farmer looked like. A farmer from that period whom you might recognize is George Washington. Some pictures you can use on the web without copyright permission because they are in the public domain. Check the rules related to copyright & restrictions. This is site specific so it doesn't cover everything you need to know about using other people's intellectual property but we'll get to that in time.
STRATEGY TIP: Have something in mind so you can see how the sites work. For example, the shoemakers on the North Shore worked in small one room wooden structures called ten footers.
If you want to see what a ten footer looks like, click on this following hypertext link A TEN FOOTER.
Another way to locate the document yourself is to visit the American Memory Page at the Library of Congress. Click on the word SEARCH and enter the terms " shoemaker's shop and massachusetts " omitting the quotation marks. Scroll down the list of results until you see a link that relates to the idea related to your search. In this instance it is the link titled "Shoemaker's Shop, Georgetown Rd., BOXFORD, Essex County, MA" Later, we'll look at how you can be more directed in your choice and application of keywords and search terms so your search results are more focused but this approach is atypical of new, untrained searchers and it can get you pretty far.
If you want to consider narrowing a topic in more depth, use the Define the Research Topic tutorial offered by California State University. Don't miss the other useful links to help for dealing with other information related issues.
Move on to Search Tools to consider using the tools at your disposal to find what you need.