Gumberg Library

Gaining a Working Knowledge of Your Topic

When it comes time to narrow a research topic, many students have difficulty because they do not know enough about the topic to do this effectively. They do not know the subtopics their larger topic can be divided into. What such a student needs to do is to gain a “working knowledge” of their topic.

What is a “Working Knowledge?”

William Badke, in his book Research Strategies: Finding Your Way through the Information Fog, says that a person has a working knowledge of a topic when he can talk about it for one minute without repeating himself (p.21). He knows the basic points about the topic and so has some idea of what subtopics may be available as potential avenues of research.

Where to Gain a Working Knowledge?

The best place to go to gain a working knowledge of a topic is a reference book. The Gumberg Library has a tremendous wealth of reference works to choose from, available in traditional paper formats, as well as electronically. In fact, many of the best known reference works are available in both formats.

Electronic Reference Works

The Gumberg Library provides access to a number of collections of electronic reference books. Each of these collections is made up of a large number of works of different types, such as specialized encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, etc. The beauty of these collections is that they contain books on all subjects. Each gives a complete list of the reference works by subject.  In some collections, all works can be searched at once, which means you do not have to have a particular reference book in mind before you start.

These collections include:

To access one of these collections, just click on a link above.  Another way to get to them is to go to the Gumberg Library home page, click on the link "Articles & Research Databases," then on the resulting screen, choose the reference collection from the alphabetical list. If you are accessing these collections from home, you will need to enter your MultiPass username and password before you can use them.

To see the comprehensive list of eReference books click here.

Using Wikipedia

Using Wikipedia is an easy and convenient way to begin gaining a working knowledge of a topic. If you choose to use it, be aware that there are two serious flaws with Wikipedia. The first is that anyone can write articles for it. You do not have to be an expert on a subject. The second is that anyone can edit the articles. Again, you do not have to be an expert on the subject. These two points raise doubts as to the accuracy of what you read there. Because of the problems regarding the authority of the writers of Wikipedia articles, gain what information you can from them, but do not use Wikipedia as a source for academic writing.