Tag Archives: keywords

o hail the library databases!

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I was not present in class, so I am not certain of what was talked about exactly. However, I have read Badke’s Chapter 5 on research strategies and have been in attendance to one of the library’s presentation on research. Some people are scared to use library databases because they seem too complicated. But believe me…when you have multiple research papers to write and your professors want peer reviews, and they want recent studies and they want all these other knick knacks, library databases can be your friend. One that I frequently use is EBSCO. I believe it’s very friendly and has different methods of searching. You can search keywords as you would in Google, or you can use Boolean search, which is what we recently talked about. You can filter out results, as well as add keywords to narrow down your topic. Another thing you can do is select the option to only show peer reviewed articles/journals. In fact, let’s say you are looking for an e-book, you can filter only those results. Once you play around with it, and work your way around it, it’s not difficult at all. Believe me, it’s my third year using it… and it has made these research projects a tad bit easier.

Badke Chapter 3

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From beginning to end of chapter 3 in the book “Research Strategies by William Badke” I was in absolute awe as I kept reading. I have been searching databases for a very long time; I also knew that the use of “keywords” are very important when searching databases. But from reading this chapter it took it to a whole new level. Badke imparted so much information in this chapter that will be  very helpful to me especially as college student.

I do researches regurlarly  and never knew that I was actualy doing it incorrectly, especially when searching for  information pertaining to a specific research topic; In fact, most of the times I usually just google the information needed using a lot of keywords. It never occurred to me that keyword must be very specific and words such as AND, NOT and OR plays a huge part in getting much better and specific results when searching databases.

In this chapter I think Badke was extremely thorough  in divulging valuable, resourceful information that will help me and many other students.

Database searching with keywords and hierarchies:William Maldonado

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In chapter 3 of Badke’s book I found it interesting how some search engines for some databases use commands just like in some programming languages to find or show certain files except it is a lot simpler. I also have never used none of the commands mentioned in chapter 3 but i think i will incorporate them and make them a habit when I am doing research. Although badke stated a couple commands he also stated that we should look at what other commands certain search engines use like Google. A great example is when Prof.Leonard used the “ti: project x”  to better find works with the title project x.

metadata

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Basically, metadata is information about information, something that build and refresh by people all the time, it’s like side effect of online living, all movements has consciences. Is it personal information? Yes. Is it possible to use it? Of course. Idea is, that how to live with this depend only from personal user opinion. If, for example, person doesn’t do anything wrong, not involved in any elicit activity and not feels like a person of government interest, for that citizen is not important if somebody can  collect his metadata and research it. It’s about seven billion people on planet Earth, more than half get internet access. How many people from this number are so important for somebody to be traceable? I think less than one percent. And still if anybody feels like big brother is watching on him, there are two very simple rules in terms of using internet and living pieces of personal information- moderation and discipline.

From the other side, what is better to use during the research : hashtags ,keywords or control vocabulary depends only from circumstances and topic, they all are different tools and represent different technique, and as Badke mentioned, is good to use them all.