{"id":831,"date":"2017-04-03T21:34:30","date_gmt":"2017-04-03T21:34:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-fmcc-researchsuccess\/?post_type=chapter&p=831"},"modified":"2017-04-13T18:27:08","modified_gmt":"2017-04-13T18:27:08","slug":"practice-with-beam","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-fmcc-researchsuccess\/chapter\/practice-with-beam\/","title":{"raw":"Practice with BEAM","rendered":"Practice with BEAM"},"content":{"raw":"
\r\n\r\nYou\u2019ve just learned about the various roles sources can play in written material. In this section you\u2019ll gain practice identifying roles that other writers have used them for and then be asked to examine your own past work.\r\n
\r\n
\r\n
\r\n

Activity:<\/strong> A Reading Exercise<\/h3>\r\nIdentifying BEAM\u2019s kinds of sources in already written materials is a good way of learning how to use them in your own writing assignments. For practice, look at an abstract of and two passages from Lesy, M. (2007). Visual Literacy. Journal of American History, 94(1), 143-153.\r\n\r\nRead the abstract and passages below and identify the most likely role (background, exhibit, argument, or method) each featured source is playing in Lesy\u2019s article. See our take on each below:\r\n\r\nAbstract:\r\n
\r\n
The article reports on visual literacy and the psychological aspects of photography. The author offers his opinions on the complexities of photographs and reports on the various levels of meaning behind picture taking. Particular attention is given to the psychological aspects of photography and photographers. Additional article topics include the importance of historical photographs, the impact of the Internet and digital media on the profession, as well as the importance of preserving photographs.<\/blockquote>\r\nPassage 1:\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
Solving one scholarly problem \u2013 the need to sort out an image\u2019s multiple meanings \u2013 opens a clear view of others. No matter how mundane, utilitarian, or circumscribed a photograph\u2019s origins may be, an image is not a sentence. Images are forms of sensory data, processed by the right brain. No matter how judicious and objective a historian fancies herself, a photograph will elicit projections and associations in her, stir her imagination, before she even notices what is happening to her. A photograph \u201cis a function, an experience, not a thing,\u201d said Minor White, a mid-twentieth-century photographer whom Walt Whitman would have recognized as a fellow poet. \u201cCameras are far more impartial than their owners and employers,\u201d White went on to say. \u201cProjection and empathy [are] natural attributes in man\u2026the photograph invariably functions as a mirror of at least some part of the viewer.\u201d SOURCE CITED: Minor White, \u201cEquivalence: The Perennial Trend,\u201d PSA Journal, 29 July 1963), 17. 20.<\/blockquote>\r\nPassage 2:\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
The problem is not that there are too few images, but too many. Historical photographs exist in huge numbers, in well-ordered collections, presided over by knowledgeable curators. More and more of the collections are being digitized. Overload and saturation are only a mouse click away.\r\n\r\nOne example: in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress there are 164,000 black-and-white photographs made between 1935 and 1945 by photographers employed by the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information.\r\n\r\n\u201cAmerica from the Great Depression to World War 11: Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1955-1945,\u201d Library of Congress: American Memory, http:\/\/memory.loc.gov\/ammem\/fsowhome.html<\/a><\/blockquote>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
\r\n
\r\n

Answer to ACTIVITY:<\/strong> A READING EXERCISE<\/h3>\r\nThe source referred to in Passage 1 is probably a background source. The author is offering Whites definition as fact. It helps support one of the author\u2019s assertions about the nature of photographs.\r\n\r\nThis source is an exhibit source. The author is using the Library of Congress\u2019s photographic archive as a self-evident example to support the claim that information overload is a potential problem.The source referred to in Passage 2 is an exhibit source. The author is using the Library of Congress\u2019s photographic archive as a self-evident example to support the claim that information overload is a potential problem.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\nNow you\u2019re ready to do role identification in a term paper you\u2019ve already written yourself. (In the future, it may be helpful to do the same as a last check on term papers you are about to turn in.)\r\n
\r\n
\r\n

Activity:<\/strong> Self-Check<\/h3>\r\nDirections: Re-read your term paper. (If you\u2019ve already gotten feedback from your professor on this paper, also look to see whether any of that feedback applies to the roles you gave your sources.)Then consider the questions below. If you can\u2019t answer \u201cYes\u201d to every question, reconsider how you have used the sources in your paper.\r\n\r\nDo My Sources Have the Right Roles?<\/b>\r\n