Academic research.
Those words alone are enough to make some people cringe or their eyes glaze over. And we get it. Academic research isn't exactly sparkly. It's mired in peer-reviewed materials (read: very long articles with industry jargon), literature reviews, and researching your research to make sure it's credible to cite. And academic libraries, by extension, can sometimes get a bad rap for being a bit bland. We don't tend to have book clubs and story times, and we don't usually conjure up childhood memories of fuzzy warmth like our public counterparts. But what we lack in nostalgia, we make up for in deep, deep dives into the minutiae of virtually any topic.
Let's take, for a completely random example, Dolly Parton. It shouldn't be shocking that you can research Dolly Parton in the library. I mean, we did it for our various Dolly items this month. But you may not know that you can find Dolly Parton in some unusual places throughout the UOPX library. Take our new collections from the vendor Sage. In December, we added the CQ Press collection, Business Foundations, Student Success, new research methods videos, and additional data sets in Data Visualization. And even though they're not the most obvious places for Dolly-related info, you can find some interesting Dolly (or Dolly-esque) tidbits in each.
So, grab your rhinestones and glitter, and let us show you how even academic research is immune from Dolly's influence.
Sage Knowledge
CQ Press
CQ Press, found within Sage Knowledge, provides timely information on American government, politics, political and governmental history, public policy, and current affairs. And for all of her philanthropic accomplishments, I've yet to find clear information about any legislative work that Dolly has done. So, when I embarked on this journey to research Dolly in our new collections, I was a little hesitant about what I would find. Yet, she's in there – but not how I expected her to be.
A quick search for "Dolly Parton" in CQ Press brings back only two results: Historic Documents of 1997 and Historic Documents of 1996. When I dug into the first result, I learned something I didn't know about Dolly (which is saying something because we've all become de facto Dolly experts around here this month):
Dolly, the sheep cloned in 1996, was named after the one and only Dolly Parton.
For those of us who were around in 1996, the cloning of Dolly the sheep was massive. While Dolly wasn't the first animal to be cloned, her cloning proved that a fully developed adult cell could behave like a cell from a newly fertilized embryo, which helped advance stem cell research.
As to why Dolly the Sheep was named after Dolly Parton, Dr. Ian Wilmut, who led the team behind Dolly's birth, said that it was because Dolly the Sheep was cloned from a mammary gland. I'll leave it up to you to make the connection.
Business Foundations
Dolly Parton may be a world-renowned singer and songwriter, but she's also a savvy businesswoman and has been instrumental in revitalizing communities, especially Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. If you've ever found yourself thinking WWDD (what would Dolly do) in a business situation, then Business Foundations might be for you.
Business Foundations provides in-depth information on business theories and examples of how to apply those theories.
- Want to become an entrepreneur like Dolly and open your own theme park? Check out entrepreneurship, which covers key theories to help you start and grow a successful organization.
- Striving to be beloved and followed by millions (or just your own team)? Leadership can help you learn about different styles of leading and how to become an effective leader.
- Want to become a global phenomenon and sell your product worldwide? International business might be your thing, as it covers commercial activities between businesses to promote their goods and services globally.
There are more topics covered, so if you want to improve your business acumen, check out Business Foundations in Sage Knowledge.
Skills
Speaking of getting better at business, we also have new skills-based content in Sage Knowledge. Found under Skills, you can choose to look at Business Skills or Student Success. While Business Skills goes hand-in-hand with Business Foundations, Student Success covers the skills you'll need to be successful as a student, including:
- Academic integrity and referencing
- Academic writing
- Communication and interpersonal skills
- Critical thinking
- Data literacy
- Diversity, bias, and impacting change
- Information literacy
- Personal development and well-being
- Research skills
- Study strategies and assignments
And, if you're sitting there scratching your head about what any of this has to do with Dolly Parton, consider this: do you think Dolly would have been nearly so successful if she had plagiarized her work? No! Would she have gotten so far if she couldn't communicate well and think fast on her feet? Not a chance! Dolly Parton is great because she excels at the same skills that make us successful as students. So, if you want to be more like Dolly, give the new Student Success sections a review, which can be found under Skills in Sage Knowledge.
Sage Research Methods
Data Visualizations
Picture this – you're writing a research paper on Dollywood (which may or may not be due tonight), and you need to show, in graphs and charts, the relationship between visitors to the theme park, how much time they spend there, and their overall happiness after attendance. You've looked at PowerPoint, Excel, and even Google, but you're unsure where to start. You almost start to panic, but you remember this blog post and the Data Visualization section in Sage Research Methods. You log into Sage Research Methods, and voila! You quickly figure out what you need, build your visualization, and finish your paper with moments to spare.
I mean, uh, days in advance because we all work ahead and get our assignments done early.
Data Visualizations contains examples, video tutorials, and practice data that help you learn how to create visualizations for your data. And, while this isn't directly related to Dolly, part of success in business (and in your research) is succinctly displaying data in meaningful and understandable ways to your audience. It's especially important for those in your doctoral program completing a research study or anyone looking to publish their research.
Doing Research Online
Did you know Dolly Parton donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center to help them develop the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine? And it should come as no surprise that there's no shortage of COVID-19 research online.
Doing Research Online is all about helping you learn how to design and conduct research studies online. It includes videos, case studies, practice data, and how-to guides to give you practical advice and real-world examples of research studies.
Let's get back to our Dolly example regarding COVID-19. If you search for COVID-19 in Doing Research Online, you'll find a treasure trove of information that you can narrow down by type of research (quantitative or qualitative) and content type. You can choose the type of statistical software or programming language used to view information that uses a specific computational method. The content also ties to other areas of Sage Research Methods, such as the Project Planner and Business Foundations, to help you connect with other concepts.
And if COVID-19 research isn't your thing, you can choose to Browse All Doing Research Online from the Doing Research Online home page and narrow down your interests or type of research from there.
Business
We've already discussed what an accomplished businessperson Dolly Parton is, and business research is an area that touches many disciplines, like healthcare administration and psychology. This is where Business from Sage Research Methods comes in. Like the other collections in Sage Research Methods, Business provides how-to guides, case studies, video tutorials, and practice datasets to help you learn how to conduct business research no matter what industry or profession you're in.
I can feel you doubting how Dolly could possibly tie into Sage Research Methods' Business. But this is where the academic library dive goes deep. Say you found a great article on women leaders in business that mentions Dolly (for example, The Diva storyline: an alternative social construction of female entrepreneurship). The article mentions that it is a qualitative study, but you need more information on what constitutes a qualitative study.
Business offers some help in demystifying qualitative and quantitative methods (among others), like this video tutorial that discusses the advantages, challenges, and mixed-methods approach of these two methods. From there, you can explore related content, including videos and case studies, using a mixed-methods approach.
But research methods aren't all that Business covers. It provides a wide range of topics, from conducting compelling research interviews to case studies in human resource management, and offers content in various formats. For example, you can review case studies in a video format.
And, as great as the content is on its own, the power of Business is when it's connected with the other areas of Sage. So, if you get stuck doing research, return to the Sage Research Methods home page and Browse By your discipline or topic.
Sage Data
Last but certainly not least in our Dolly journey is Sage Data. For those who haven't explored this resource, Sage Data includes precisely what you think it does – data. But it's more than just a data table that's hard to read and looks like it's from the 1990s (if you know, you know). In Sage Data, you can create custom visualizations such as maps and trend charts and gain an understanding of data concepts through its Data Basics. It includes locale and business data across multiple disciplines and combines data from various sources, making it a great place to start your data research. It's also worth noting that Sage Data has undergone a massive facelift since we first brought it into the library, so if you weren't impressed when you first saw it, it's worth giving it another chance.
I started my Sage Data journey by searching for Dolly Parton and then Dollywood. Dolly Parton turned out to be a bust (pun not intended), but I had sixteen promising results for Dollywood, and after I checked out a couple of the datasets, I noticed two things. First, the data was super limited for Dollywood by itself. Second, a parent company was listed for some of the entries (and if you've ever researched companies before, you know all about parent companies). So, I ran a new search for HERSCHEND FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT.
Bingo!
Herschend Family Entertainment owns Dollywood and Dollywood-related properties and other entertainment entities. I could view Dollywood data and compare it against the company's other holdings by displaying specific locations alongside its overall information. I was also able to bring in data from other datasets for comparison, so, just because I could, I viewed the revenue/sales data along with the employee count for each entity. And, best of all, it was easy and quick, and the charts updated automatically as I made my selections.
While the Dollywood example for this blog is limited in scope, when you start to think about looking at similar data at a local (who's the largest employer in a specific area) or industry (how does a company compare in revenue against the industry) level, the possibilities become much more impactful.
From One Researcher to Another
With that, we've come to the end of our Dolly tour in our new Sage content. We hope you were as entertained reading about it as we were writing and researching it. Our Sage databases are some of our favorites because of their rich content and easy-to-use interfaces (not to mention their punny marketing materials), so we highly recommend trying them.
As always, if you're unsure where to start, you can submit a question to our research team through our Ask Us form, and we'll send you an email with search strategies and customized database recommendations.
And, if you find any additional Dolly-related information in Sage, leave us a comment and let us know!
Alexis Soard is an associate university librarian and oversees the library's systems and operations. She likes all things autumn and the smell of books.