Week 9 — Readings & Resources

Your primary reading is Chapter 9 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 11 items (5 readings and 6 videos). Allow 69–78 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more practice, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (18–21 min total)

• Check Yourself with Lateral Reading: Crash Course Navigating Digital Information #3 — CrashCourse
• News Literacy Skills: Lateral Reading — Library blog
• Primary vs. Secondary Sources — Writing Center

① What am I actually looking for? From topic to research question

Chapter 9, Section “Turn a topic into a research question” · Session 1, Segment 1, “From topic to research question” · Remember: a topic names a subject and asks nothing, while a research question tells you what to search for and what to skip.

• How To Write A Research Question: Full Explainer With Clear Examples — Grad Coach — a walk through what separates a strong research question from a vague one, with worked examples of narrowing. It is aimed partly at longer research projects, so take the narrowing moves and skip any advice about choosing a dissertation topic. (video, 9 min) (captions: automatic)
• The Research Process: Refine a Topic — Library research guide — a short guide to finding the middle ground between a topic so broad you drown in sources and one so narrow a single fact answers it, with a before-and-after example. Use it while working through the Week-9 module overview. (reading, 3–5 min)

② What kind of source is this? Primary, secondary, scholarly, popular, trade

Chapter 9, Section “Sort sources by what they are: primary vs. secondary” · Session 1, Segment 2, “Sorting sources by role and audience” · Remember: the labels tell you what kind of evidence you hold, and your research question decides which role a source plays.

• Primary vs. Secondary Sources: What's the Difference? — History in a Hurry — a two-minute primer on the thing itself versus writing about it, with history examples. Notice that the label depends on the question you are asking, which the chapter's news-article example shows too. (video, 2 min) (captions: automatic)
• Primary vs. Secondary Sources — Writing Center — a one-page list of what counts as a primary source and what counts as a secondary one, with examples such as diaries, speeches, and scholarly articles. This builds on Week 8's three-sentence habit: before you say what a source says, know what kind of source it is. (reading, 2–3 min)
• Scholarly and peer-review explained — DianeLibrarian — a short explanation of what makes information scholarly, how to tell whether a book counts as scholarly, and how the peer-review process works before an article is published. (video, 2 min) (captions: creator)
• What are distinguishing features between scholarly journals, trade journals, and popular periodicals? — Library FAQ — a side-by-side description of who writes, who reads, and how each of the three kinds of periodical is checked. Try sorting the running draft's four sources before you read it, then check your labels. (reading, 3–5 min)

③ Should I trust it? The checklist and lateral reading

Chapter 9, Section “Read laterally: leave the site to judge the site” · Session 2, Segment 3, “The checklist and lateral reading” · Remember: judge a source by what independent sources say about it, not by what it says about itself.

• Check Yourself with Lateral Reading: Crash Course Navigating Digital Information #3 — CrashCourse — a lively demonstration of reading laterally: leaving a site, opening new tabs, and checking who is behind it before trusting what it says. Watch for the moment the presenter stops reading the site itself. (video, 14 min) (captions: creator)
• Click Restraint: Crash Course Navigating Digital Information #9 — CrashCourse — why the top search result is not automatically the best one, and how scanning the results before you click helps you choose a source on purpose. (video, 13 min) (captions: creator)
• How to Do Your Own Research — Study Hall — how to look into a claim yourself: where to search, how to weigh what you find, and when to trust it. Stop before any advice on quoting or paraphrasing what you find; next week takes that up. (video, 11 min) (captions: automatic)
• News Literacy Skills: Lateral Reading — Library blog — a short post contrasting vertical reading, which judges a site by its own pages, with lateral reading, which checks what other sources say, plus three steps to try on the next site you meet. (reading, 2–4 min)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

• Evaluating Digital Sources — Online Writing Lab (OWL) — a free reference page on judging online sources: what search rankings, domain extensions, and online databases do and do not tell you about a source. The parts on podcasts and social media are optional for this week. (reading, 8–10 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

Provenance: Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com