The 2024
Connecticut College
Prize for
Undergraduate
Library
Research
$500 Award | Applications due 3/08/2024 | Winners published in Digital Commons
Information Services is excited to announce the winner of the 3rd annual $500 Connecticut College Prize for Undergraduate Library Research:
Dominic Lentini '18
For the project:
"Media Framing, Violent Protest, and Race: A Comparative Analysis of The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times' coverage of the Ferguson Protests"
Written in the Fall 2017 semester for Professor Daniela Melo's course, Gov/IR seminar (GOV 494W).
An excerpt from Dominic's application:
"I used the library’s OneSearch, JSTOR, Political Science Complete, Google Scholar, and Lexis Nexis as the main tools for finding new articles and books. Within all of the databases I would do advanced searches with a variety of different search terms such as “framing,” “media framing,” “framing violence,” “framing race,” “framing protest” and many combinations within those terms. I would then read the abstracts to gauge potential relevance, and save every potential article to RefWorks so that I could later examine their methodology, data, and conclusions. For anything I could not access through those databases, I used both the CTW network, WorldCat, and Inter Library Loan to access them....
"For my data collection process, I used ProQuest Newspapers to search all articles published in certain date ranges based on set search terms in order to create frequency tables of article publication, and then to do content analysis of a selection of those articles. I realized, however, that some articles were coded inconsistently, and consequently double counted, which threw off all of the article counts...."
The full-text of winning research statements is available in Digital Commons.
Acknowledgements:
Many thanks to everyone who submitted their work or sponsored a student for this year's competition.The Library Prize Committee was impressed with the high quality of this year's applications. In fact, there were so many good applications this year that we could not select a stand alone winner without acknowledging the outstanding accomplishment of two very close runners-up:
We are thankful to have received so many scholarly entries for this year's prize from a variety of departments and centers, including: Architecture, Economics, Education, First Year Seminars, Gender & Women's Studies, Government & International Relations, Music, PICA, Psychology, and Slavic Studies.
The annual prize was awarded for the first time in 2016. It is the first award at Connecticut College specifically created to recognize excellence in the research process. Its purpose is to honor students who have demonstrated excellence in research, and to motivate students to learn and deploy sophisticated research strategies. The competition is judged by a team of librarians and faculty (see Library Prize Committee).
All currently enrolled undergraduate students are eligible for the prize, and any student work for a grade (excepting work for honors projects) was accepted. Entrants submitted a copy of their work and a research statement describing their process, along with a bibliography and a note of recommendation from a faculty member.
Students are encouraged to consider applying, and faculty, similarly, are encouraged to suggest that students apply.
The Library Prize Committee is grateful to the Friends of the Connecticut College Library for their generous sponsorship of this award.
The Connecticut College Prize for Undergraduate Library Research is adapted from UC, Berkeley, Library Prize for Undergraduate Research; Temple University, Library Prize for Undergraduate Research.