Post-Draft A
Research WebQuest
Due: Monday, September 28th
The following WebQuest is designed to introduce you to two vital resources for gathering credible sources: the
Healey Library Databases and Google Scholar. Even if you are familiar with these resources, please read the steps
carefully as you will be guided to setting up home-access to UMB resources and given specific tasks for gathering
your first set of research materials.
Step 1: Thinking of your draft’s research potential, create a list of key search terms you could use to look up or
investigate a certain area of interest:
Step 2: Go to the Healey Library and get a library bar code added to your student ID if you do not already have one.
You’ll need this code to access the databases when you’re not on campus.
Step 3: The following boxes indicate a checklist of steps. Feel free to literally check off each step as you complete
each one:
Healey Library Resources
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Go to umb.edu/library and click "Databases & Indexes."
Choose "Academic Search Complete" from the list. If you are off-campus, you’ll need to use the barcode
you retrieved during Step 2. Once logged in…
Check off the “Full Text” box under Limit your results
Check off the “Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals” box under Limit your results
At the very top of the page, type in a key search term(s) related to your area of interest and press Search.
Scan the terms under Subjects for the first five articles. Do any of them seem helpful terms or phrases?
Add new ones to your list. These are the kinds of terms that this search engine uses to tag articles. Think of
it like finding popularly used #hashtags.
Now read through a few abstracts by clicking on the title of an article and, when an article looks interesting
or relevant to you, click on the “Cite” button on the right-hand side of the screen. Then, scroll to see the
MLA citation.
Copy/paste that citation onto a blank document so you’ll have it.
Then click “Email” to send a copy of the article to yourself.
Google Scholar
If you’re off-campus ….
o Go to scholar.google.com and click “Settings” on the top right of the screen.
o On the left hand side, click “Library Links”.
o In the search bar, type “Healey” and then check the box marked “University of Massachusetts Boston FullText@HealeyLibrary”. Click “Save”. Once you set up the link between Google Scholar and the Healey
Library, it means that you will be able to use Google Scholar as a search engine and locate sources that the
Healey Library has for free. Don’t pay for articles through Google Scholar; UMB pays for them for you!
o Test out the link by searching for anything in Google Scholar. Then, scan the right-hand side of the page for
any articles that say FullText@HealeyLibrary.
If you’re on campus, or after you’ve set up your home computer …
1. Use Google Scholar the same way you used the Healey Library Databases by entering key terms into the
search bar. Scan titles, read abstracts, and then select an article you find interesting to work with.
2. Before opening the article, click the word “Cite” underneath the title and copy/paste the citation to the doc
you used to save the citation for your first article.
3. Then, click "Cited by [#]" under the title. This gives you a list of other scholars who have cited this
particular article. This can be useful if you want to easily find related articles but can’t think of more search
terms to try out. Scan through a few pages and locate one that seems interesting to you, click on “Cite”, and
post that citation to your doc as well.
By the time you’ve completed the steps above, you should have
A. Explored Healey Library’s Databases in order to locate one article
B. Set up Google Scholar to access UMB’s resources at home
C. Located two articles via Google Scholar: one using the search terms you’re interested in and one using the
“Cited by” method.
D. Gathered three MLA citations onto a document
Now your task is to select one of the three articles to read actively by glossing it. Then, on the same document as your
three citations, spend at least one paragraph writing about how this article helps you to develop a line of thinking
from your draft. What questions does it help you to answer? What new ideas about motivation, transformation, or
origins does it bring to light? Does the article make you rethink your original analysis? If so, how?
Bring an accessible copy(print, laptop, tablet) of your annotated article and your page with your citations
and paragraph to Monday’s class in hard copy.