Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

Research and the Internet

These are some notes from a shortcourse I attended entitled “Research and the Internet” today at the Texas Tech ATLC. It was taught by Monica Wall Matzner.

Identify all the synonyms that you are using, use those also when googling

Try the “similar pages” link on Google search results

Ask reference librarian for help in selecting the correct library databases

Reasons to use library databases
– more full text PDF versions
– peer reviewed, more credible than journal-based sources

Differences in library and Intenet searches: by author, title, subject in library
– by Google is just search by keyword and Boolean search terms

3 types of search engines
– global: all topics, very broad: excite and yahoo
– dedicated: just info in a particular content area, Medline (national library of medicine)
– Meta: coperinca and google are examples

“Near” as a restrictive search term works within 25 words

+ is and
/ is or
– is not

“not” is ignored by Yahoo, but you can use the minus symbol without a space

My thought: I should do an interview with the reference librarian for education, and then podcast that

– we should survey our students about their use of the library versus the web
– have breakdown by grad student / undergrad

TTU library offers a 1 hour class, teaching you how to use the library to do research

Keys for measuring credentials of the author
– education and experience of author
– host website
– host institution
– site affiliations (indicates bias in the information)

Measuring site credibility
– publication date / update date
– host entity
– contact information
– other resources
– bibliography / references

These are good things to remember when publishing information too! (I should update my TEKS articles to make sure these items are included)

Internet Citation Guides from the Univ of Wisconsin-Madison:
http://memorial.library.wisc.edu/citing.htm

TTU English department is scanning all their submitted documents to find plagiarism
– check with Dr Fred Kemp

“If it didn’t come from your brain, you need to cite a source for it”

My article on Digital Dishonesty:
http://www.wtvi.com/teks/04_05_articles/digital_plagiarism.html

Worth A Closer Look? Website Evaluation Revisited
http://park.robcol.k12.tr/jroyce/webevalbib.htm

TLTC search site (has good exercises):
http://www2.tltc.ttu.edu/search/

The Annals of Improbable Research:
http://www.improbable.com/

My tips:
– when you have a website that has moved or changed addresses, copy the address and try putting it into the Internet Wayback Machine.
– Great Citatation resources are Citationmachine.net from David Warlick’s Landmark Project and Endnote software (I don’t think anyone in graduate school should write a research paper, thesis or dissertation without Endnote!

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