Like any project, creating a solid foundation of resources that inform both theories and data of your topic is an important step. Developing a project that falls within the framework of my concentration and independent study have provided a great starting point for the beginning of my annotated bibliography.
My concentration offers a lot of resources on theories, like resilience, and helps build them up to allow me to expand them to my situated context. This is where I find myself wanting to make sure that I am getting well-read, widely-referenced resources. My independent study on nuclear power, is where I have seen my resources becoming more technical and situated. This ‘situated-ness’ not only applies to Japan, but also just in the context of nuclear power as opposed to other power sources or disasters.
Based on my already accumulated resources, I feel fairly okay with the top of my hourglass. I think the concepts that I focus on can be streamlined a little better, which will hopefully come with time going through them all. Articles that were directly related to the Fukushima disaster started to go a more helpful direction when they began referencing specific evacuation efforts, psychological distress, and other responses by communities. The middle and bottom of my hourglass in general are a little tough because I am still working on what exactly I am going to be doing, but the resources that I have already are helping guide me in the right direction.
I think that my first round of resource-hunting was primarily just grabbing as much relevant information as I could, but as I go forward I do think that I need to start being more thoughtful about the resources I am bringing in, as I am far enough into the project to need more direction…in other words, it would really just be wasting my own time if I were to gather less-than helpful articles.