Library resources Your Take Home Essay 2 Academic Sources Searching library & Internet COMM 170 24 FEBRUARY 2015 Danny McGee, Professor; Liz Dobson, Librarian 1
library.centennialcollege.ca You need an active library account to have FULL use of the library Come in person to the Library with your Student Card and staff will activate it for library use. Ashtonbee Library, Room L-202 Distance Access 2
LIBRARY RESOURCES Centennial Libraries homepage http://library.centennialcollege.ca/ START YOUR RESEARCH Search all Library Resources & Check your Library Account
Guides menu LIBRARY Guides APA style Copyright & Educational Use of Images Etc.
More help with APA Style Microsoft Word Library databases
Your Take Home Essay 2 Assignment Choose a topic (A, B or C) State a thesis ( argument ) Find at least 3 publications that relate to your thesis. (Make adjustments to your thesis, if needed, based on what you have learned in your research.) Write an essay (700 to 1,000 words in APA style) that discusses various viewpoints (including your own)
A sample thesis How is racism expressed in Canada today? (Hmmmm Canadians tend to think of themselves as a tolerant, officially multicultural society! True?)
HOW TO FIND GOOD QUALITY RESOURCES TO ANSWER YOUR RESEARCH QUESTIONS?
Which to use?? LIBRARY OR INTERNET?
Library databases & the Internet what s the difference? Databases (E-resources) More academic Big Precision tools save you time Internet Quality varies widely Huge You rely more on the search engine to determine results 10
Research for Your Essay Learn the strengths and weaknesses of both library & Internet and use them appropriately
.. PRIMARY & SECONDARY SOURCES
Primary source In the context of academic research or writing: designating an original document, source, or text rather than one of criticism, discussion, or summary. Examples? -Oxford English Dictionary Online
Primary ( original ) sources Some examples: Scholarly (peer reviewed) journal articles that are writeups of original research done (e.g. surveys, experiments, analysis of newspaper articles, coding of observed behaviour) Statistics or other data collected using accepted research methods (e.g. surveys, questionnaires, etc.) Other original documents or accounts: interviews with individuals who have direct first-hand experiences or eye witness status, diaries, letters, photographs, maps, some newspaper articles, video & film, published first-hand accounts or stories
Secondary ( not original ) sources Some examples: Works of criticism Literature reviews - gathering together statistical data provided by other primary researchers Summaries of others work Opinion pieces Discussion lacking research support
Author describes a research study written by others Primary or secondary source?
Authors use and manipulate massive raw data collected by Statistics Canada & others - they publish new & original research findings. Primary or secondary source?
Why talk about this distinction between primary & secondary sources? Researchers say it is important! to know the difference between primary & secondary sources. Do you agree or disagree? 2014 Sept 29 Photo Hong Kong protest, Admiralty Centre Source: commons.wikimedia.org https://www.google.ca/search?as_st=y&tbm=isch&hl =en&as_q=hong+kong+protest&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_ eq=&cr=&as_sitesearch=&safe=images&tbs=sur:f
Academic Peer reviewed journal articles (primary sources - most of them) A committee of scholars must approve quality before the editor publishes Also called refereed or scholarly All are fully documented ideas and quotations from others are cited, and a bibliography is provided Most peer reviewed articles are write-ups of original research Most databases allow you to limit to academic peer reviewed if you want Easy! 19
Documentation is a sign of scholarliness Note: in-text citations
References at end of article provide full publication info for citations made in the essay above
How to Identify Reliable Websites? Commercial website Government website
RESEARCH -> Search the Internet -> How to Evaluate Websites
Who can you trust?
What can the URL tell you? (Not as much as we might expect, unfortunately)
Who wrote the page? Named? Credentials? Affiliations? Contact info? Environmental Racism in Canada?, by Alexander (Sandy) Miller. Centre for Environmental Health Equity website http://www.cehe.ca/er
What s the bias? Centre for Environmental Health Equity. About us. (http://www.cehe.ca/aboutus )
Recommend using publication date limit when searching to get current resources
LIBRARY DATABASE SEARCH You can lay on your search strategy directly onto the page. Easy!
With your search strategy in hand you can go directly into the Library s E-Resources & E-Books / Journals (Full Text) (databases)
Centennial Libraries E-Resources page Approximately 100 library databases Listings by Subject, Type, Title
Go E-Resources by Subject library web page Social Sciences group
LIBRARY E-RESOURCES ( DATABASES ) Canadian Studies group
Canadian Reference Centre database: A simple one-concept search (with two terms), limit to full text
A simple one concept search 30,842 results With full text limit
A more complex search with two concepts, each with more than one term Use one row per concept (you can add more rows if you need them)
A two concept search 7,941 results With full text limit
Sample detailed record in a database, showing FIELDS Information about the article is entered in FIELDS. Title field Subject field Geographic field Abstract field all 4 are powerful field limits to use to get fewer records and more relevancy.
Title Field limit LIBRARY database tools Direct searching in databases provides you with many tools. Use Field Limits to get fewer records and more relevancy Geographic Terms Field limit
Using field limits reduces the number of results, but increases their relevancy 92 results Full text limit Title and Geographic field limits (a vast reduction from previous search with no limits)
Scholarly (Peer reviewed) Limit Use this limit to get more academic articles (many of which are write-ups of original research done) 20 results Peer Reviewed (Scholarly article) limit
Most databases provide tools to print, email, save and cite
More Limits typically available in a database : Publication date Document Type Publication Type Image content
Multiple database searching Many databases allow you to add more databases to your search to Expand your results.
Multiple database searching Choose more databases for your search
Expand your results by adding more databases Exact same search different results: 9 databases 2,674 results 1 database.. 92 results
Subject field terms (Thesaurus) Another way to Expand - and improve quality - of your results by including these subject field terms in your searches ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Most databases provide a thesaurus that lists preferred terminology/ subject field terms
Thesaurus Browse Subject field terms
Thesaurus Subject field terms Use as many terms as you feel will be useful
Page Options To speed browsing your results list Select Detailed Page Option. This will give you title, subject headings and abstracts in your results list.
Results page with Detailed Page Options on On display are Title Abstract Subject Terms
What we covered today doing direct database searching Limit tools: Using more concepts Field limits Scholarly (Peer Review) limit More limits (publication date, etc.) Expand tools: Multiple database searching Using terms provided in database thesauri Managing results: How to print, email, save, & use database citation help Browsing tip: Page options for efficient browsing
Google Basic & Google Advanced Search Google Scholar & Google Advanced Scholar Google Images & Google Advanced Image Search INTERNET
Journal articles on the Internet.. GOOGLE SCHOLAR
On Internet Find Google Scholar
On Internet Google Scholar For scholarly journal articles (Use only FREE content.)
On Internet Google Scholar Basic search page Click on arrow to get to Advanced Search page
On Internet Google Scholar Advanced Search page..more tools for precision searching
askon Chat with library staff on your desktop or laptop
Direct E-Resources ( databases )searching PRACTICE
OTHER TYPES OF LIBRARY SEARCHES
Using the Libraries Search Everything discovery tool EXAMPLE: LOOKING FOR A LIBRARY BOOK
Using the library s Search Everything discovery tool.
Over 2 million library records
Using the Book / ebook refinement, results are reduced to 9,585 books on this topic
Using the Items with full text online refinement, results are reduced to 3,874 all ebooks now
Changing refinements to search for full text online scholarly Journal articles Almost one million records Sort, like Google, is by Relevance (can be changed)
Using the Library Search Everything discovery tool EXAMPLE: LOOKING FOR A JOURNAL ARTICLE
Sample journal article in a database Full text PDF Options to print, email, download, cite
Using the Search Everything engine Sometimes when you click title to view on results page, you see this intermediary page. Click on Article to get into the database to view full text
Another sample journal article in a database Full text PDF Options to print, email, download, cite
Most databases give you help in citing your sources in APA style Another sample journal article in a
Email option
Steve Joordens on Critical Thinking from the Psychology Department at the University of Toronto Scarborough TVO website: http://tvo.org/video/164673/steve-joordenscritical-thinking?page=5
Media Literacy See, for example, these two library DVDS from the Media Education Foundation (US) Rich Media, Poor Democracy (DVD in the library) The Myth of the Liberal Media (DVD in the library)
Sample citation in APA style A particularly complex example: a reprinted segment in a book In-text citation example: (Bissoondath, 2014, p. 35) Reference: Bissoondath, N. [2014]. I m not racist, but In F. Gavin, Donville, E. & Vavrusa, D. (Comps.), Effective reading and writing for COMM 170 and beyond. (3 rd custom ed. for Centennial College, pp. 34-36). Boston, MA: Pearson Learning Solutions. (Originally published by Neil Bissoondath @1989.)