LIB 1201 Research and Documentation for the Information Age

In class last week I learned how to use the library databases provided by city tech. These databases are very helpful because they have articles that aren’t readily available through google or other commonly know search engines. I also learned that you can narrow your search by keywords given by the database derived from your original search results. I may actually use these search techniques in the near future for my analytical chemistry class. Soon we will begin a project with the gowanus canal. We will have to submit a possible method to identifying the various pollutants within the canal, and also how to remove them. We will have to search other polluted water sites and look for similar strategies to use for the gowanus canal clean-up.

What I learned  for the past few weeks was that there are many ways to search for a specific information. Honestly, I always thought there were just one or two ways: go on Google or use its advanced search engine called Google Scholar and type for any keywords that is familiar to the topic you are looking for. When I was in this class however, I learned that there are a lot more ways and search engine program that are more accurate and useful that Google. For instance, a library database such as EBSCO and  CQ. Both of them has given me great results for searching  for my topic.  Unlike normal search engine like Google, most of the articles that they  suggested me where relevant to my topic. The only thing I hated about using those advanced internet searching proggram was the fact that some of the articles had to be purchased  in order to read it completely. But overall, thanks to this class, my searching skills has improved. I feel more confident searching for my topics because its now fast and easy to do so.

I have learned how to find information efficiently and accurately in different ways in this course. I used search engine mostly because it is simple and fast. I just type keywords in search box, it will pull out tons of articles. Sometimes, many of articles probably are irrelevant to the topic. Sometimes the articles are not accurate and credible on the internet.  School teachers usually courage students to use database to search information than using search engine. It is been organized by provider, so information found in database is more reliable and credible. Students can discover more relevant articles when using the database.