How to Ask Reference Questions II

The student may wish to be informed:

Are there different kinds of reference questions that I might ask at the Thammasat University Library?

The answer could be:

Yes, questions may be described as either basic facts, background data, or original research.

The student may wonder:

What is the difference between these three kinds of reference questions and how do they affect how I ask a librarian for help?

We may reply:

Basic facts often involve when something happened or how many people or objects are being discussed. If we need to find out a question of basic fact, it can usually be resolved fairly quickly and directly, often from online sources.

All TU students are familiar with such basic facts as the following:

Documented European contact began in 1511 with a Portuguese diplomatic mission to Ayutthaya, now one of the great powers in the region. Ayutthaya reached its peak during cosmopolitan Narai’s reign (1656–1688), gradually declining thereafter until being ultimately destroyed in the 1767 Burmese–Siamese War. Taksin (r. 1767–1782) quickly reunified the fragmented territory and established the short-lived Thonburi Kingdom. He was succeeded in 1782 by Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke (r. 1782–1809), the first monarch of the Chakri dynasty and founder of the Rattanakosin Kingdom, which lasted into the early 20th century.

This sort of data is widely available and immediately answers a question. We would not need to spend too much time in finding it. TU students in the Faculty of Journalism or those who study problem solving, and other fields have probably been informed about The Five Ws. These are basic questions that reporters need to know when writing a story. They include:

Who

What

When

Where

Why

Some experts insist that a sixth basic fact is also necessary to be added to the list:

How

These reference questions are elementary because their answers do not take much time. They require information that is immediately available. The question which may need the most time to fully answer is Why.

The student may ask:

Where do I find the answers to basic questions?

Our reply would be:

Reference works, in printed and online formats, often have most of the basic facts that are needed for a thesis or academic research project.

Then the student may ask:

What about background data?

We might say:

Background data offers details about the context of the information we received about basic questions. Things that influenced the basic data and made it the way it was, for instance.

Depending on the subject for academic research, the nature of the background data might be different. For example, if the student is preparing a thesis for the TU Faculty of Economics, then the background data would relate to systems of production and management of material wealth and business activities. If the student is at the TU Department of History, Faculty of Liberal Arts, the background data would be about conditions during a certain event and how the situation influenced what happened. At the TU Department of Philosophy, background data could be about helping to explain in detail the nature of existence or some phenomenon as it relates to the subject being analyzed. At the TU Faculty of Political Science, background data would relate to the public purpose or reason why some development occurs. At the TU Faculty of Sociology and Anthropology, the environment of people in which something happens, showing how they use it and what meaning they draw from it, could be useful for a research project.

The student may ask:

Where can I find background data?

Our reply:

Again, encyclopedias and other serious reference work could be a good source for background data.

Finally, the student may wonder:

How do I do original research?

The answer might be

Original research means asking in-depth questions, some of which may not have been asked before.

If we wonder how an experiment was done and whether more research must be done before definitive conclusions can be drawn, we are doing an original analysis of past research. So we will probably not find the answers to these questions in encyclopedias. Instead the TU Library reference librarian can offer advice about books, articles, and online sources that would provide information about reasons for historical events, company data, cures for diseases, educational issues, and a wide range of other subjects.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)