Help I am lost!

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With all this information available at my finger tips it is easy to get lost in web pages. Having to read articles, and judging which ones have the most relevance to my topic becomes overwhelming. Using scholarly works for research again reminds me of how much I can trust the information provided. As long as I am willing to spend the time scanning them. I do mean “scan” because reading entire articles would be too time consuming. I used ERIC – Education Resources Information Center in class and was enticed by how much more solid the information provided was. Rather then using Google and having to be skeptical about what I clicked on. Both search engines require navigation through a lot of information, however ERIC provides scholarly work which I can trust more. Using key words and playing around with them helps me bring up more narrow search results. This is definitely helping me to find my way, in the beginning stages of looking for concrete material for my paper.

Hierarchies

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What would sentences be without words?
Sentences makes finding out and understanding the concept and meaning of a word easy and brings out the sense in the word. Badke states that “ keywords are flat. Keyword search engines scan across the broad surface of databases looking for matches”. This situation has happened to all of us where searching for a keyword turns into an endless pit of irrelevant links that has nothing to do with what your initially are looking for.
Hierarchies makes researching so much easier. Combining words and using phrases to help narrow down your search.

Summary of today, and reading/blogging for Monday, October 28

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Today we discussed advanced internet searching using scholarly search engines and portals, and spent time discussing (and using) Google Scholar and LibX. Slides from today are available here.

On Monday we’ll discuss searching and finding in library catalogs. Please read Badke Ch. 5 pp. 74-82 & 89-93 and review the Library of Congress Classification Outline.

Your blogging assignment is one research journal blog post. Please write one blog post in response to the following prompt:
In class today you tried out advanced search strategies and scholarly internet resources from the Badke reading to search for sources on your research topic. Describe one advanced strategy or scholarly resource you used.
Did you find different information sources than you found doing a regular internet search (just using Google, Bing, etc.), and if so, how are they different? Did you encounter any difficulties that you haven’t encountered in a regular internet search?

Remember, the annotated bibliography is due on Wednesday, October 30. Please get in touch if you have questions about the assignment.

~Prof. Leonard

By the way, happy Open Access Week! This video is a great summary of Open Access and scholarly communication:

HW 10/7/13

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Basically this article “Opening access to knowledge” discuss a very popular problem today. Why should students pay for educational materials that are needed for the class or some project. Sometimes student pay that money for nothing. Author does not understand ,why student should pay twice for material that was written mostly by university professors for student education. One of those companies is JSTOR, they provide educational materials that suppose to be free ,for money. JSTOR has provided an important service to academic and other research communities by scanning back issues of journals and offering subscriptions to research institutions,but this storehouse of knowledge is not as openly available as Swartz apparently thought it should be. He downloaded 4 million articles from the JSTORE in only one purpose ,to show to the government and rest of the country ,that educational material must be free for students.Federal prosecutors decided to charge him with 13 felony offenses,which lead him to commit a suicide.

HW 09/25/13

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What is copyright? A lot of us heard this word many times , but less of us know ,what it really means.Basically every original work of author has a copyrights, same at the web.I think every teacher or professor in the college has told us ,that we cant use information or works of other people from the web ,its illegal and against the law, in some private colleges people were kicked out because of copyright violence.We can use digital copies ,but cant use other people writings. We can use copyright ,but only under doctrine of fair copyright use.Even some commercial products have special label ,where is written, that their product is only for educational or private use.Educators can use copyrighted material ,only if its relevant to their topic and they should provide protection against third-party access and download.And finally,students can use copyrighted material only if they need to make some presentation or its needed in educational purpose,they can use different videos ,music to develop and discuss their topic, But they cant never copy and paste some authors ideas in their work,its illegal.

Today’s summary, and reading/homework for Wednesday 10/21

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Today we continued our discussion of the research process, refining your topic, and creating search strategies. We spent time using easybib.com to create and manage bibliographies, and we also used bubbl.us to do some concept mapping. Slides from today are available here.

On Wednesday we’ll discuss — and do — advanced internet searching. Please read Badke Ch. 6 (all) and Ch. 7 pp. 161-164. Please view the web search strategies video from Common Craft. Remember, the final version of your research topic proposal is due at the start of class on Wednesday! See the assignment guidelines or get in touch with me if you have questions about the assignment.

~Prof. Leonard

The Struggles

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Research is often tedious, as it refreshing. Some difficulties that I found as I work was obtaining various court cases and documents (primary sources). When the media reports on Copyright Infringement, often, names are left anonymous and sentencing is also left in the dark. Thus, in order to successfully correlate infringement punishment and morality, obtaining court documents is a necessity. It is painstaking but its almost completed.

A strategy that I found exceptionally useful is the use of narrowing search parameters. Using “AND” frequently in search engines and databases has garnered better results than simply searching for a broad topic.

Down the road

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THe most difficult part of this research proposal draft was actually trying to figure out what topic to choose. Trying to narrow the the topic i hit a wall. Its like writing a paper for my sociology paper, i chose crime but the number of categories that fell under crime made it difficult to choose. Even though my topic is on privacy and “terms and agreements” im still not sure is i want to head down this road. Maybe privacy and the government, or plagiarism. I still have to dig deeper into my topic to see if its plausible to do. Wonder in the end will my research topic  the same when this is all said and done?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Research?

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In our current day and age, we can receive so much information on anything we seek to research. So much information that can overwhelm us. To take advantage of all the information we can search, we have to to broaden our writing to something that becomes informative and to a manageable size. With the tips that Badke gives, we can harness what we should put into our research that is informative but not in the form factor of a full length book. With these tips, I’ve learned to compress large sums of information that doesn’t overwhelm me, or the reader. With this, we are able to show how that compression doesn’t have to be a lack of information.

My Research Path

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The topic i choose is very broad and it can be narrowed down to different subtopics. I don’t expect  many difficulties in the continuation of my research. What concerns me as of now is how to narrow down my topic and which path to choose. I expect to find more articles about my topic as well as media coverage. Putting together all of my research will be rather challenging and how to express all that information into a 6-8 page paper. In my opinion my topic would cover more than the required pages but my objective is to find many opinions on the topic as well as many articles to try to compare them to answer my research question in full detail.