Members: Elfatih and Steeve
The link to the documentation is listed below for the source evaluation game called C.R.A.A.P
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Group Documentation Project on Source Evaluation Game.
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Author Archives: Steeve
Critique of Documentation.
I went to Wikihow to get a step by step on how to make a saline solution, I chose method 2 of 2. Step 1 is to mix one cup of water and ½ a teaspoon of salt into a pan; it does ask to make sure the salt is iodized. Step 2 is to cover the pan for 15 minutes and to allow the solution to come to a boil, within those 15 minutes it is recommended that you to prepare a vessel (jar or a neti pot) to hold the solution once it is done.  One detail that would have been appreciated for step 2 is how high I do set the temperature of the stove because too low and it might take longer than 15 minutes to bring the water to a boil. In the final step your saline solution is ready for use; I plan to use it for a sore throat so I added lemon juice to the solution. This walk-through does capture the process, the only critique I have is that the directions should be written in a more detailed manner.
Vanishing sources on the Wayback machine.
Chapter 5 of the Vanishing act explained in a way why it is important to put the date accessed on a citation, it is mainly because of the half-life of the citations. This whole time I thought that the date accessed section part of a citation was just for teachers to make sure their students werenât procrastinating on a project. It never occurred to me that the Wayback machine could be used to find disappearing citations and to find those disappearing citations the date when you accessed the web page would be required. Thanks to the Wayback machineâs archival of the web it is able to give us at least a glimpse into sources that may have disappeared due to their half-life. I also now understand why journals are so highly valued in academic research besides being peer reviewed they also have a very high half-life an average of 5 years according to chapter 5. With their high half-life it takes a while for them to disappear from the web; which helps them to get archived and to back up our papers.
The Google Paradox.
Google claims to be an observer that gathers information for the masses and just allows the internet to dictate the search results. In part III of the Google dilemma titled âsearch: Jewâ Google didn’t intervene when that Googlebomb went off, its plan was to let whoever gets the most links solve the issue; they took more of a laissez-affaire approach. Then why didn’t they take the same approach when the search King Incident happened, sure Search King was allegedly using a link farm which was more questionable than a Googlebomb. One reason they might have interfered was probably because Search King was in some ways in completion with the giant that is Google; Search King also performed queries/searches although at a more local level. Could Google have used this as a chance to take down a small competitor? I should Google it.
BRIC in BK.
Many maps at BRIC stood out to me like the Foursquare log in/check in map but the work that left an impression on me was the Joyce Kozloff piece called âTargetsâ. It was this sphere like structure that you were able to enter and once inside you were able to see all of the countries that the U.S has bombed from 1945 to 2000. Another nice feature was the acoustics of the structure, because any time you said something it was echoed back at you. I wouldn’t say this piece changed my perspective on maps but it did make me realize that almost all data can be put into map form, the data in âTargetsâ just illustrated the fact that the U.S has an itchy trigger finger. One data in my daily life that I would like to visualize on a map would be all of the places in NY that I have been to so far.
Journal on Library vs Internet.
I performed a search for âdata brokersâ using Google and a couple of relevant results did float to the top. I had to sift through a lot of questionable websites because they didn’t have an author or too strong of a bias, which brought their credibility into question. Another reason I doubted their credibility was because they weren’t really backing up their statements with any data or research.   While on the other hand when I used EBSCO there was less skepticism on my part when looking at the results, mainly because a lot of creditable information floated to the top. While using EBSCO I did refine the search by adding privacy to one of the subject fields to make the search more specific. I did find about a couple similar articles between the internet search and the library database search but about two of the results had a pay wall while using the internet search engine, the library database search allowed me to bypass a couple of pay walls since it was linked to the schoolâs account.
A Scholarly Google.
On Monday we used Google Scholar, while using Google scholar I tried a simple search for my topic and it turned up several results that I did not see in a regular Google search. Google scholar also showed me citations that I in turn used to track down the full articles. I also used EasyBib to store some of the locations for the articles and journals that I found, EasyBib did also allow me to evaluate some of the websites addresses by telling me whether the website was credible or not. Google Scholar was nice to use but I still prefer the likes of EBSCO and Lexis Nexis academic, maybe itâs because I have spent a little more time with them but I like the way they let you narrow your search so you can choose from journals, newspaper articles to just court cases.
Journal on Topic.
The first difficulty that I encountered was that I did not know what topic to choose for my research. I even looked through some of the previous readings that we were assigned for some inspiration. After I finally got a grasp on what I wanted my topic to be the next problem was coming up with the question. The main problem was that my question seemed too open ended and Reading chapter 2 & 3 of Badke helped somewhat with that problem. One question I have about the assignment is how recent should our sources be? so that I can know what time frame to search.
Searching For The Right Search.
I never knew a topic/word search could be so intricate; all this time I have just been blindly putting in words into the search databases regardless if it was Google or Ebsco. Badke describes a searcher conducting a broad search and coming up with 4,386 results this searcher ended up sifting through those results to try to find what he was looking for; all I could think of is âThatâs meâ! I mean I donât look through 4,000 results but I have looked through at least 100s of different results until I found what I needed. After reading chapter 3 of Badke I plan to start using, âandâ, truncation, nesting and âorâ; all of which I have never used deliberately while conducting a search. I have now seen the error in my ways and I plan to turn over a new leaf and to start searching the right way.
Order through Metadata.
The metadata talked about in Badke shows us that sometimes you have to give up some control to find what you want. Using a subject heading search can at times be a lot more effective than a keyword search; although I still believe a keyword search is more convenient for a lot of people. A keyword search maybe broad but it will at times like a subject heading help lead you somewhere you weren’t planning to go. Honestly were it not for school I would seldom use a subject heading/taxonomy search mainly because a keyword search is how I usually search for anything on my phone or at home. For me a keyword search is like a bad habit I have been trying to quit but itâs just too easy to keep picking up.
I feel as though the Jessica Dye article on folksonomy was written about one year too early. I say this because almost three weeks before the article on March 21st Twitter happened; twitter in my opinion is one of the ultimate folksonomy tools and would have surely given Dyeâs article even more validity. Almost everything on twitter gets tagged no matter what it is, the whole hash-tag phenomena has taken off since twitter started being used by the public.  One problem with folksonomy happened in class when professor Leonard mispelled âNicky Minajâ in a picture search and everyone who misspelled her name and tagged her picture with a âyâ showed up, but when she corrected her search and spelled it with a âiâ it displayed a lot more pictures. I bring this up to show that folksonomy is not always used correctly, if you misspell a word that word still gets tagged with that misspelling so any picture with that misspelling might not show up for someone who searches for it while using the correct spelling.
