Thursday, October 21, 2010

The Search for Gold

This week’s required readings presented various research methods that we could incorporate into our SSHRC proposal (or for all future research). As I was doing the readings, as useful as they would be for the future, I failed to find numerous parallels with the methodology I chose to incorporate in my proposal (getting a little worried?). Nevertheless, something that suited my research question was documentary analysis. According to Knight, this method is entirely legitimate for a study and thus a paper can be based on these documents alone (104). Therefore, for my research paper, I intend to analyze a Toronto Public Library architecturally. In doing so, this can only be achieved by reviewing physical documents. Although, as Knight points out (107), various archives and thus documents are available online (which he is surprised that this form of research is not done more often-yet this method is was I mostly learned and utilized in my undergrad-am I a minority? Kind of hard to believe). Nevertheless, I am very sceptical (based on my initial research) that I can find all the documents I require (for ex. floor plans) electronically. Time for some digging…

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