The real structure of the Library Skills Task, the source doors for your umbrella subject, and how to check a citation before you submit.
A small item in the grade, but the rehearsal for the rest of the term.
The first paragraph of the assignment sheet states word for word when it happens: "This assignment is to take place following the library session and after the essay has been assigned (week 3-5)." Two conditions at once: after the library session and after the essay has been assigned.
The order is not an accident. The task is about finding sources for the essay you are going to write. The form cannot be filled in without the essay question on the table, because the last section asks what the source you chose will do in that essay. Careful: what it hangs on is not the research paper, it is the essay.
Filling in the form is one sitting's work, but the searching is not. Fill it in the day you come out of the library session, do not leave it to the next day: the window can be 24 hours.
The same form, two different field sets. The fields you fill in for a journal article are not the same as the ones for a book chapter.
| # | Journal Article | Book Section |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Source | Source |
| 2 | Brief Summary of Source (In Your Own Words) | Brief Summary of Source (In Your Own Words) |
| 3 | Author | Author |
| 4 | Title | Editors |
| 5 | Journal Name | Chapter Title |
| 6 | Year | Book Author |
| 7 | Volume / Issue | Book Title |
| 8 | Pages | Year |
| 9 | Doi Number | Pages |
| 10 | Database (if applicable) | City |
| 11 | Publisher | |
| 12 | Database (if applicable) |
In the rubric PART 3 alone is 5 points, half the task. The paragraph has to do three jobs at once: summarize the main points of the source you chose, explain why you chose this source (reliability, the parameters of the essay, a comparison with the ones you did not choose) and say exactly what you will use the source for in the essay.
Most of the score sits in the middle item. The summary is the part everybody can write; what makes the difference is being able to write out the two sources you cut along with the reason you cut them. The rubric's criterion says the same: a clear and meaningful summary, separating your own voice from the writer's, a detailed explanation of the source's relevance to the topic and its purpose in the essay.
The form the same student filled in. The essay question: "Do richer nations tend to be happier than poorer ones?" The name, number and section were removed. The three entries are of different types, which is what the rubric asks for.
Tang, Zhilin. "They Are Richer But Are They Happier? Subjective Well-Being of Chinese Citizens Across the Reform Era." Social Indicators Research 117(1), 2014, 145-164.
The error in the form: 2017 was written in the Year field, while the PART 2 bibliography of the same document says 2014. Two different years in two places in the same assignment.
Hagerty, Michael R. and Ruut Veenhoven. "Wealth and Happiness Revisited: Growing National Income Does Go with Greater Happiness." Social Indicators Research 64(1), 2003, 1-27.
The error in the form: "Growing wealth of nations does go with greater happiness" was written in the Title field. That is the title of the full text version sitting in one of the authors' own archive; the title of the version published in the journal is different. Both files are in the student's folder and the wrong one made it into the citation. The CrossRef record confirms the published title.
Easterlin, Richard A. "Happiness: A Happier World?" in The Fabulous Future?: America and the World in 2040, ed. Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro, 33-46. Northwestern University Press, 2015.
Because it is a book chapter the field set changes: the Editors, Chapter Title, Book Title, City and Publisher fields get filled in here, and the Journal Name and Volume fields do not exist at all.
The source chosen was Hagerty and Veenhoven. The justification rests on three legs:
So the two sources that were cut are written out along with the reason they were cut. That is the move that earns the points. The paragraph came out at 244 words, and the lower limit asked for is 250.
Measured from the submitted PDF and from the archived Moodle assignment page.
A task that cites a source incorrectly, or presents text someone else produced as the student's own work, gets a zero and becomes a disciplinary matter.
What follows is a worked example. If your own umbrella is something else the method is the same: first find the field's own journal, then name the two sides of the argument.
Country rankings, the measurement method (the Cantril ladder) and yearly thematic chapters. The easiest source for context in your introduction; the chapter list also gives you ideas for sub headings.
Citation: cited like a book, with the editors and the chapter number. Warning: the report is annual, so state which year's report you took it from; the chapters of the 2019, 2023 and 2024 reports are different.
Peer reviewed articles on the measurement of happiness, education and happiness, culture and wellbeing. If the umbrella subject is Happiness, this is the field's main journal. It is listed under SpringerLink Electronic Journals in the library's FAE guide.
Income, inequality, welfare indicators and subjective wellbeing. Most of the Easterlin argument is in this journal.
A verified sample citation: Hagerty, M. R. and Veenhoven, R. (2003). Wealth and Happiness Revisited: Growing National Income Does Go with Greater Happiness. Social Indicators Research 64(1), 1-27. The CrossRef record matches the title, volume, issue and pages exactly.
The argument about happiness not rising while income rises. This literature carries a counterargument paragraph on its own, because both sides are peer reviewed and answer each other.
Entry points: Easterlin, R. A. (2015). Happiness: A Happier World? in The Fabulous Future?, 33-46, Northwestern University Press (CC BY-NC-ND licensed on JSTOR). Tang, Z. (2014). They Are Richer But Are They Happier? Social Indicators Research 117(1), 145-164.
For when the definition of happiness is a conceptual matter rather than a measurable one. A definitional argument goes in the introduction or in the definition of terms.
Lloyd Thomas, D. A. (1968). Happiness. The Philosophical Quarterly 18(71), 97-113. This article is on the course's own reading list too, so it is a text your instructor knows.
The texts your instructor gives you at the essay stage are of this kind: pieces by Pew researchers, newspaper columns, popular science writing. These are not peer reviewed; they are used to show the two sides of an argument, not to build an argument.
The rule: at the research paper stage a newspaper piece is not support on its own. Pair the same claim with a peer reviewed source.
Every one of these addresses was tried one by one on 11 September 2026 and opened.
The 16 citations in the same student's first draft were tried one by one on 11 September 2026. The lesson: check the citations you are submitting like this BEFORE you submit.
This line is in that same works cited list: "Araki, H. (2021). Education and life satisfaction: Evidence from happiness data. Journal of Happiness Studies, 22, 1593-1615." The DOI next to it is correct and works. But the article that DOI opens is this: Araki, S., "Does Education Make People Happy? Spotlighting the Overlooked Societal Condition", Journal of Happiness Studies 23(2), 587-629. The author's initial, the title, the year, the volume, the issue and the page range: none of them match.
The irony is that the PDF of the correct article is sitting in the student's own folder. The rule: invention hides most often in the fields next to the DOI. Because the DOI looks right, the rest of the line goes through unchecked. Do not produce a citation from memory or by having a tool generate it, copy it from the first page of the PDF you have.
Even if the title fits your topic exactly, open the DOI first. In the file we measured there was a PDF whose title sat right on the topic, downloaded through ResearchGate, and its DOI does not resolve today. If the journal is unknown, the DOI does not open and the citation count is zero, do not use that source. That student did not use it either: the PDF is in the folder but it never got into the works cited.
The dropdown next to the search box gets mixed up. Three separate tools, three separate jobs.
| Tool | What is in it | When |
|---|---|---|
| English & Composition, Library Skills (the ENG 101/102 guide) | The guide the library wrote for these two courses directly. Its tabs: Introduction · Finding Sources - Books · Finding Sources - Journal Articles · Research Skills · Mendeley · Plagiarism · Citing Sources · Off-Campus Access. | Before the Library Skills Task. This is the one document to read once and be done with; it already covers most of what is below. |
| Library Catalog | What the library actually holds: print books, e-books, periodicals, student projects, multimedia. The 'Format' icon in the results tells you the type; print gives a call number, electronic gives an access link. | When you have a book title in hand. If you cannot find it, search the same author: a Turkish translation can have its own record. |
| Quick Search | The collection + subscription databases + open access together. The two filters on the left are critical: 'Available in Library' (full text only) and 'Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals' (peer reviewed only). | The first stop when looking for articles on a topic. In Advanced Search the title, author and subject fields are separated, which makes building a Boolean search easier. |
| Databases A-Z (and the list by type) | Every database Bilkent subscribes to, alphabetically and by type (e-book, e-journal, Research and Learning Tools and so on). | For narrowing the search field when your topic is set. The 'Research and Learning Tools' section holds tools like Mendeley, Turnitin, iThenticate and Akademik İntihal. |
| Research Guides (subject guides) | The library's starting pages built field by field, from architecture to psychology, from law to molecular biology. There is also a standalone Annotated Bibliography guide. | When your topic goes outside your own department (which happens often in ENG 102): instead of guessing which database that field is in, look here. |
| Oxford Bibliographies Online | Annotated starting bibliographies written by a specialist in the field. | If you are entering a topic from scratch, spend the first twenty minutes here. The professional answer to 'which five things should I read first on this topic'. |
| Annual Reviews | A database made up entirely of review articles. | For learning where a field has got to in the last ten years from a single text. Its works cited is a ready made reading list. |
| FAE's "Top 10" databases | The library's FAE subject guide lists by name the ten databases the program uses most: JSTOR · Literature Online · Loeb Classical Library · MLA International Bibliography with Full Text · Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) · Oxford University Press Journals Online · SAGE Journals Online · Taylor and Francis Online Journals · University of Chicago Press Journals · University Press Scholarship Online (UPSO). The weight of the list is in literature and the humanities, which is where FAE's course texts come from. Names like Project MUSE, Scopus, Annual Reviews and SAGE Research Methods are in the same guide's long database list but not in this ten. | If a general search gets you nothing, search directly inside these. But do not take the list as it stands: in ENG 102 you pick your own topic, and if the topic drifts into psychology or economics these ten will not carry you, so move to the subject databases below. |
| Scopus and Web of Science | Citation indexes: they show who an article cites and who cites it. | Once you have one useful article in hand. The 'Cited by' list gives you the criticisms written after that article, the only way to catch the last five years of the argument. |
| Subject databases: PsycINFO/PsycARTICLES · EconLit · ERIC · MEDLINE/PubMed · MLA International Bibliography · Philosopher's Index · Avery Index · CIAO | In order: psychology, economics, education, medicine and health, literature and linguistics, philosophy, architecture periodicals, international relations. | When your topic falls into a clear field. If you are working on screen time and mental health, PsycINFO; on carbon pricing, EconLit; on pedestrianization, Avery. Far more accurate than a general search. |
| SAGE Research Methods | A collection of books, chapters and cases on research methods. | When you are writing about why two studies gave different results, that is, arguing about a difference in method. You learn what terms like 'effect size', 'specification curve' and 'cross-sectional' mean here, in a form you can cite. |
| Ulrich's Periodicals Directory | A directory that tells you directly whether a journal is refereed. | Instead of answering 'is this journal peer reviewed?' with a guess. Thirty seconds of work. |
| ICPSR · World Bank (WDI) · Statista | A social science data archive, development indicators, a statistics aggregator. | When you need a number. Use Statista to find it, not to cite it: the original source is named under every figure, and the citation goes to that. |
| Turkish sources: TR Dizin · DergiPark · Idealonline · Turcademy · Hiperkitap · YÖK Thesis Center | Turkish academic journals, e-books and theses. | When your topic sits in the Turkish context. In ENG 102 you write the text in English, but you can cite a Turkish source too, and you have to state its language in the citation. |
| Off-Campus Access: VPN and SSO | Access from off campus goes two ways: a VPN account (a SEPARATE account from your STARS/BAIS one, and its password has to be different too) or SSO with 'Institutional Login' on databases that support it. | Before you say 'I cannot get in' at home. Those supporting SSO include JSTOR, Scopus, Web of Science, ProQuest, EBSCOhost, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, Nature, Cambridge Core, SAGE, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, Oxford UP, Annual Reviews, ACM and Statista. |
| Faculty Librarianship and Ask a Librarian | Every faculty has a librarian assigned to it; the service description covers support in reaching information, one to one user training and suggesting sources for the collection. The Academic English program has an assigned librarian too; the name and email are in the right hand column of the FAE subject guide (the name in the guide in September 2026: Burcu Erbil). For quick questions: live chat on weekdays 09:00-17:00, [email protected] / [email protected], the phone (weekdays 08:30-23:30, weekends 09:00-23:30) or the Circulation Desk. | When you cannot build the search right. Take them the search problem, not the topic: 'in which database, with which terms, do I find two studies that answered the same question with different results'. |
| Material Request (asking for a book for the collection) | The library's own page says this service is open to academic and administrative staff AND to students. It can be requested through the form, by email or through your faculty librarian; the condition is checking first that it is not in the catalog or the databases. | When the book you need is not in the collection. A slow route for a submission inside the term, but a real route, and it is not closed to undergraduates. |
| Interlibrary Loan (ILL), CLOSED to undergraduates | The wording on the service page: 'This service is available to faculty members, doctoral and master's students.' Undergraduates are out of scope. But there is a working route on the same page: for the partner libraries inside Ankara, the user collects the source THEMSELVES; Bilkent only brings things in from outside Ankara. | Do not build your plan on ILL. For a source held in a library inside Ankara, ask the ILL office which libraries there is an agreement with. |
| Reserve and E-Reserve | The texts your instructor set aside for the course. Print ones are collected from the Circulation Desk and used for 2 hours inside the library. Electronic ones open 24/7 from the campus network through the Bilkent Institutional Repository, searching by course name, instructor name or course code. | The first place to look when you lose a course reading or when the print copies run out on the shelf. |
| Mendeley (institutional) and Zotero | Reference managers. Mendeley with the Bilkent subscription: in the app, 'Sign in via your organization' → 'Bilkent University' → username is your Bilkent ID number, password is your STARS/BAIS password. Zotero is free and open source, and works with Word and Google Docs. | Once you pass five sources. You enter the citation once and can change the style later. You can download a RIS from the 'Export citation' option on an EBSCO record and import it into either one. |
| Akademik İntihal (app.intihal.net), your own similarity report | According to the library's ENG guide, the plagiarism checking tool a student can access themselves. A free student account with a bilkent.edu.tr address; to generate a report you ask your instructor or advisor for an access code. Students have no direct access to Turnitin. | Before you submit the final draft. The report is not a grade; it is a tool that shows you which section needs a citation or a rewrite. |
| BilWrite, the Bilkent writing center (but it does NOT look at ENG assignments) | The Academic English Program's free writing consultancy. The restriction on its own page is explicit: they do NOT help with work for the ENG courses (101, 102, 117/8, 206, 401) or PHIL 243/244, and the reason given is that 'the instructors of those courses already give one to one tutorials'. | Do not go for your ENG 102 assignment, you will waste your time. But the citation guides on the site (APA, MLA, Chicago, with no version number given; for Harvard see the library's ENG guide) and the general writing advice are open, so use those. For a statement of purpose, an internship application or a departmental assignment, the door is open. |
| Your borrowing limit | Undergraduate: 15 books, 15 art books, 15 easy books, 15 bound journals, 15 days. Multimedia 7 days, up to 7 items. You can renew from your account if nobody has placed a hold; you can place a hold on a book that is off the shelf. There is a daily fee when you are late. | Take out the core books for your research paper in weeks 8-9; take them out in week 10 and you have to return them in the middle of the writing week. |
| Open access: DOAJ · DOAB · OAPEN · CORE · arXiv · Zenodo · JSTOR Open Access Books | Free and legal full text sources; Bilkent lists these too. | When you cannot reach an article through the library subscription. It is also the only channel that stays open after you graduate. |
Starting straight in on an article search is the most expensive mistake. A search made without knowing the map of the field gives you either thousands of results or zero.
You cannot read every PDF you download end to end. Do not break the order.
| Type | Good for | Not used for |
|---|---|---|
| Peer reviewed research article | A finding, a method, a number | Summarizing a whole field |
| Review article | The state of the field, the sides of the argument | Citing a single finding |
| Book | A conceptual frame, a long argument | A current number |
| Institutional report (WHO, IPCC, OECD) | Data, definitions, international comparison | A causal claim |
| Book review / commentary | Showing where an argument stands | Standing in for evidence |
| Newspaper / news | The date of an event, an actor's statement | A scientific finding |
| Data aggregator (like Statista) | Finding the number | Citing the number: go to the original source |
A primary source is the study that collected the data itself, a secondary source is what was written about it. If you take a finding from a secondary source, open the primary one too: it can change in the retelling.
This guide itself fell into that mistake twice, and both are still here. First: a book review published in a journal had been labeled as an "article". A book review cannot be used like a study that collected its own data. The second was sneakier: a book and the review of that book published in a journal carried word for word the same title, the review came up first in the search, and half the citation had been taken from the book and half from the review.
A practical rule: before you write the citation, look at the top of the page. If there is a journal name, a volume and pages, it is a text published in a journal; if there is a publisher and an ISBN, it is a book. The title can be the same in both.
No submission by this name appears in the syllabus, so your instructor may or may not ask for one. Even if they do not, write it for yourself: it is the fastest way to fill in the support column of your outline. A source whose fourth row you can leave blank is not a source, it is filler.
| Field | Your answer |
|---|---|
| The citation, in the style your instructor asked for | |
| What it asks, what it measures: how many people, which year, which method | |
| The main finding, in my own words | |
| Which of my claims it serves | |
| What its limits are, including the limits the author states | |
| Primary or secondary; academic or popular | |
| If I am not using it, why |
This is the reason most of the work people give up on with 'I cannot get in' fails. The library guide warns explicitly: the VPN account is a separate account from your STARS/BAIS one and you have to create it first. On top of that, the VPN password is required to be different from the STARS/BAIS password.
There is one more route without VPN: some databases support SSO. On the publisher's site you pick "Institutional Login", choose Bilkent, and log in with your STARS/BAIS details. Among those reachable this way are JSTOR, Scopus, Web of Science, ProQuest, EBSCOhost, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, Cambridge Core, SAGE, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, Oxford University Press, Annual Reviews and the ACM Digital Library.
Your borrowing limit: as an undergraduate you can take 15 books for 15 days. You can take the three or four core books for your research paper at once and keep them, but take them in week 10 and you have to return them in week 12. Good timing is weeks 8-9.
The common syllabus does not name a citation style, your instructor does. Ask in the first week and note the answer down somewhere in writing: learning the style after the paper is finished means rewriting the works cited.
| APA | MLA | |
|---|---|---|
| In text | (Surname, year, p. 12) | (Surname 12) |
| Inside the sentence | Surname (year) argues that | Surname argues that (12) |
| Name of the list | References | Works Cited |
| Author name | With initials: Surname, A. B. | With the full name: Surname, First name |
| The information brought forward | The date | The page |
| Book | Surname, A. (Year). Title of work. Publisher. | Surname, First name. Title of Work. Publisher, Year. |
| Article | Surname, A. (Year). Title of article. Journal Name, volume(issue), pages. DOI. | Surname, First name. "Title of Article." Journal Name, volume, issue, Year, pages. |
Below are the sources behind every entry in the topic bank. Every book was searched one by one in the Bilkent catalog, every DOI was tried, and an address that did not resolve did not make the list. The same list is also available as plain text.
Do not use the list as a reading list. Its job is this: once you pick an entry, find the three or four sources behind that entry here and start your chaining from there.
The DOIs of the ones with an address were tried one by one on 11 September 2026 and all of them resolved. A DOI that did not resolve did not make the list.