WELCOME TO EVANSDALE LIBRARY!

Noël Kopriva

Agriculture, Natural Resources, &

Design Librarian

304.293.9747

Noel.Kopriva@mail.wvu.edu

The Information Cycle, generally

The Science Information Cycle

Researcher has an idea

Does hormone

replacement therapy

increase the risk for

breast cancer?

Women’s Health

Initiative designs

study

WHI conducts study

on trial group of over

16,000 women

Paper published in Journal

of the American Medical

Association

Results reported on

news, Internet, magazines.

CQ Researcher article

discusses it.

Someone reads it

(and quotes it)

Adapted, with permission, from Linda Blake’s Biology 115 LibGuide, located at http://libguides.wvu.edu/biology115.

Information Sources: scholarly vs. popular

Nobody wins with this approach

• Students avoid generally reliable

“popular” resources that they might prefer

to use and their citation style is not

appropriate or correct

• Students use scholarly articles they don’t

understand and their citation style is not

appropriate or correct

• Students can miss out on using scholarly

articles they DO understand

Are written by academic experts (look for a university or laboratory affiliation)

Articles in scholarly journals

Have abstracts and reference lists

Have a specialized format (often consisting of an introduction, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusions)

Use discipline-specific languageThe rose flower phenolic compounds, especially

anthocyanic pigments, have been extensively

studied …

Are written by journalists

Articles in Popular Magazines

Don't use Methods, Discussions, and Results sections

Use language understandable by the general public

Have taglines instead of abstracts

It’s something no one alive today

will likely ever see again…

BOTH KINDS OF SOURCES ARE RELIABLE WHEN:

• They are appropriate to the assignment or

research project

• They are carefully evaluated and chosen using

guidelines such as CRAAP* or RADCAB*

• The researcher integrates them into their paper

or research project according to professional

standards

• The researcher cites them professionally and

ethically

CRAAP = Currency, Relevance, Accuracy, Authoritative, Purpose

RADCAB =

Relevancy, Appropriateness, Detail, Currency, Authority, Bias

GOOD NEWS!

Library resources tend to be reliable for academic work!

And I have already found some of them for you!

They are at http://libguides.wvu.edu/plsc105!

START WITH SUMMON

REFINE YOUR SEARCH WITH EBSCOHOST

Go to EbscoHost from Summon ….. or your class LibGuide

REFINE YOUR SEARCH WITH MOUNTAINLYNX

Go to MountainLynx from Summon ….. or your class LibGuide

QUIZ! GET OUT A PIECE OF PAPER

1. You get news from Time magazine during what phase of the

information cycle?

a. The beginning, when an event first happens

b. The middle, about six months after the event

c. The end, about a year after the event

2. Scholarly articles are better than academic books.

a. True, because they are the most detailed

b. False, because all types of information in the cycle are parts of the

information picture

c. False, because books are always better than articles since they’re

longer