LIB 1201 Fall 2011

When I first used Cuny+, I had some difficulty using it because it wasn’t working well.   After a while I was able to find some information on my topic that I believe would be great from my research paper.  While I was searching, I managed to find a book that the City Tech library has, which is great for me.  =)  After looking through other search results, I found plenty other articles and searches that would be great for my paper.  The phrases and key words I used helped me find information really easy because of my topic.  I used the key words ‘digital media’ and ‘text media’ which is basically what my research topic is going to be about.  The difference was the speed especially, but other than that, the two sources were different because they had different information on my topic.  The similarities were that they helped answer my research question which is perfect for me.

I did a search for my research topic using the CUNY +, I just searched for social media and I got about 3800 records. That’s a lot. Most of the Electronic Resource were not from City Tech, they were from CUNY. But the problem with the CUNY + is that most of the books are not very specific, they are more focused on the society and stuffs like that. I guess that’s because Social Media is a new thing. I ended up with more information when I used an internet search engined. It was clearer and the articles I found was much more interesting and helpful. One more issue with the books is that it’s way too long, it would be a waste of time to read the whole thing. I prefer internet searches better than the Library resource.

Advance searching comes in when we are getting lost in a poll of information. We know that regular search methods are not the best way to dig up relevant information. Badke has being able to advance my knowledge to search. He ask that one must be able to identify a broader topic which his/her topic maybe part of. Further that, he encouraged using the Boolean search mechanism. Most free popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing use keyword in search for information but college libraries will have a more sophisticated engine that may look for keywords and topic headings at the same time. We will definitely face some crisis in the future as most people turn to popularity rather than relevance. Searching using Google Schoolar is the best free engine I have used publicly t find resource-able information on the internet which can contribute to my paper.

The more and more I get deeper into this project the more I realize exactly how much time and effort will needed to be put in to get the results I want. I have been using Google scholar, and getting information, but I am not finding the specific type of articles that I am looking for. I also would like to know how you found certain information in video form, because I believe that would also be helpful as well. I am going to use the video we had to watch about copyright as a source in my essay, because just watching that video prompted me to choose this topic. Otherwise I can see I will probably need a little more help than I originally expected but I guarantee my end result will be well rounded and deeply researched. I would not only like to explicate the knowledge i have found but also learn it for myself as Badke mentioned.

-Tarik Clarke

Google scholar is a great way to find information on my topic.  It is way better than google and yahoo because those two search engines don’t give me good scholarly sources than google scholar.  Google scholar is like the search engine for more precise information on topics that people really want to research.  Normal Google sometimes gives you searches that have no relativity to your topic.  While google scholar gives you more precise and factual information.  The difficulties from a regular search engine and google scholar are different.  In google scholar, there are articles that may seem to be good for you research topic, but you can get fooled by their topic.  For example, if I see a link that I think would be good, but it then turns out to be not what I wanted or a book that you can’t read online for free.  I think that is what is different in the search engines.