life after google: how to conduct scholarly research
TRANSCRIPT
Life After Google: how to conduct scholarly research
Rebekah CummingsSalt Lake Community College
11/20/14
Who am I?
Overview of today
• Research – where to begin?
• Evaluating Sources of Information
• How to Search the Web
• Databases – Your new best friend
• How to cite your sources
Research: The activity of getting information about a subject
Where to begin?
• What kind of information are you looking for?– Facts? Opinions on controversial subjects?
Research studies?
–What do you need to support whatever it is that you are trying to say?
Current events? The New York Times
Demographics/ statistics on the US population?
Census data/ http://www.data.gov/
Local history? A county library or local newspaper
archive might be a good place to start
Commercial products? The company website or
consumer reports
Where would be a likely place to look for what you need?
Unsure of where to start?
For example…
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_disease
• Read the article• Check the references
Where do you search for information?
Evaluating Information
Applying the CRAAP Test
Currency: Is it timely?
Relevance: Is it important for your needs?
Authority: Who says?
Accuracy: Is it reliable and correct?
Purpose: Why was it written?
“Every time we let ourselves believe for unworthy reasons we weaken our powers of self-control, of doubting, of judiciously and fairly weighing evidence… The danger to society is not merely that is should believe wrong things, though that is great enough, but that it should become credulous , and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.”
- William Clifford, The Ethics of Belief
Searching the web
• How search engines work• Robots crawl freely available content• Can only search webpages, not databases• Anyone can post anything online – no formal
review process• Millions of results – some good, some bad• FREE!!
Be a better Googler
• Select your search terms carefully
• Use Boolean operators (AND, NOT, OR) – eagles NOT Philadelphia
– Apple AND computer
– Sudden Infant Death Syndrome OR SIDS
– Small Pools NOT whales
Be a better Googler – part deux
• Use quotation marks for an exact phrase – “to be or not to be”
• Use * for truncated words– adoles* to find adolescent, adolescents, or
adolescence
• Search within a specific site– Gun control site:nytimes.com
Other great sites – data.gov
• Need data? http://www.data.gov
Medical information - MedlinePlus
• http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/
Your turn
• Tell me about your next project…
Databases vs. The Web
• The “Invisible Web”
• Copyrighted content not freely available on the web
• Thousands of relevant, scholarly articles written by
credible authors from reliable sources.
• Formatted citations are often available.
• Better information; less time searching
• Can search from anywhere with a username and
password.
Databases
• Salt Lake Community College Library: http://libweb.slcc.edu/
• Log in with your SLCC student ID and Pin #
We are going to look at three today
• Academic Search Premier (EBSCO)
• ProQuest Newsstand
• Sirs Researcher
Yes, every last one of them
Works cited: things to think about
• How many sources do you need?
• Citation style?
• Do you have a variety of sources?
• Do your sources represent different points of view?
• Do they pass the CRAAP test?
Tools to help
• http://www.easybib.com/• http://www.citationmachine.net/• https://www.zotero.org/
Prepare to be amazed…
• In my day: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/06/• Now: https://www.zotero.org/
Thanks for listening!