The process of data collection is ongoing. After we learned how to look for books in the library of Congress of the university, yesterday a staff of the library animated a workshop the purpose of which was to help us use the electronic resources and the different databases provided. Now I think I am able to use EBSCO (Elton B. Stephens COmpany) database to look for journals and aricles. I found two interesting results which I emailed to my inbox. Both articles appeared in the Journal of Islamic Studies. The first one is entiltled " Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire", which I believe would be of great help for me to trace the behavior, the customs and traditions, and the everyday life of people in the Ottoman era. The second is "The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire" deals more with building aspects and architectural traits.

My data collection has been very fruitful so far, be it in terms of books or articles from the databases. Still, the most important thing in yesterday's step is that we had to look for information in authoritative sources and peer-reviewed journals.