Writing in the Disciplines
Frederic Murray
Assistant Professor
MLIS, University of British Columbia
BA, Political Science, University of Iowa
Instructional Services Librarian
Al Harris Library
frederic.murray@swosu.edu
How does Google Search work?
Google Search
• PageRank (algorithm)
– 500 million variables
– 2 Billion Terms
• Bias?
• Popularity is a Proxy for Importance
Personalized Search
• Google’s algorithm will suggest “what
is best for you” – based on past
searches.
• It’s as if we looked up the same topic
in an encyclopedia and each found
different entries.
Personalized Search
• Find information that is most likely to
reinforce your own worldview
• We begin to lose dissenting
opinion/conflicting points of view
• Yet search seems neutral, objective,
unbiased.
Personalized Search & the Internet
• When ideology drives the dissemination of
information, knowledge is compromised.
• Inadvertently we indoctrinate ourselves
with our own ideas.
• Google is likely to direct you to material
with which you already agree.
SO WHAT?
What are the repercussions for research
carried out in an environment where
Search itself is being compromised?
Best Practice
• A major error is to look only for
sources whose ideas, findings, or
arguments they already agree
• Do not start out to prove “X”
• Start out to find out about “X”
“There are days when the result is so bad that no
fewer than five revisions are required. In contrast,
when I'm greatly inspired, only four revisions are
needed."
--John Kenneth Galbraith
WRITING
is essentially
REWRITING…
Boyer, Paul S., and Stephen
Nissenbaum. Salem Possessed; The
Social Origins of Witchcraft.
Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University
Press, 1974.
Exercise I: Research Puzzle
The Research Process
• GET A TOPIC
• DEVELOP YOUR SEARCH
STRATEGY
• SEARCH AND READ
• WRITE YOUR PAPER, SPEECH
PRESENTATION ETC.
• CITE YOUR SOURCES
P.A.W.
• Planning Assignments Wisely
• P.A.W. gives you step-by-step
instructions for writing good papers
and finishing them on time.
Boolean
• AND = Narrow
• OR = Expand
• NOT = Exclude
Tools of Scholarship
Content
• Books
• Articles
• Journals
• Citations
• WWW
Tools
• Catalogs
• Databases
• Lists
• Indexes
• Search Engines
Catalogs: List of Books
• Al Harris Catalog
• Open WorldCat
• Ebrary
E-Books: Ebrary
•
•
•
•
•
24/7
Full Text Searching*
Highlight Markup
Note Taking
Online Bookshelf
• Chapter Results
Choose Appropriate Databases
• Subject Specific:
– CINAHL = Nursing
– BIOSIS = Zoology
• Search a range of databases
• Think about the range of sources:
books, journal articles, statistics,
websites, conference reports…
JSTOR
• Includes archives of over one thousand
leading academic journals across the
humanities, social sciences, and
sciences.
• Search by discipline: Sociology
We think of citation patterns as the
flow of information," says Carl
Bergstrom, a biologist at the University
of Washington. "That's what a citation
is — the trace that an idea flowed
from one place to another."
Snowballing
• Building on the works of others
• A scholarly article will always have
References/Bibliography
• A bibliography is always ripe for the
picking…
Bibliography
Tracking Citations
Wild, D. (2003, March). GOING TO WAR:
A LITERATURE REVIEW. Emergency
Nurse, 10 (10), 18. Retrieved June 4,
2009, from Academic Search Complete
database
Tracking Citations
Wild, D. (2003, March). GOING TO WAR:
A LITERATURE REVIEW. Emergency
Nurse, 10 (10), 18. Retrieved June 4,
2009, from Academic Search Complete
database
The Citation Video
Class Exercise
• Citation Worksheet
• Identify Citation as Book (B) or Journal (J)
• Locate Item in Catalog or Database
• Identify name of Catalog or Database
Specialized Search
• Wolfram/Alpha
–
A computational knowledge engine: it generates output by doing computations from its own internal
knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links.
• Scrius
–
For scientific information only. A web based comprehensive scientific research tool.
• Ipl2
–
Internet Public Library (IPL) and the Librarians' Internet Index (LII). A directory.
Questions?
• Contact me:
• Frederic Murray
• 774-7113
• frederic.murray@swosu.edu
Thanks!