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09 September 2006
INFORMATION COMPETENCY
RESEARCH RESOURCES 1
a work in progress
PART 1 (recognize and access
information) | PART 2 (evaluate, use, and document information)
PART 1:
General Information
How To Know | General
Information Literacy Guidelines
Information Competency Tutorials | Research Steps
Searching for and Finding Information
Clearinghouses | Directories-General | Directories-Special
| Discussion Groups, Newsgroups, Chat
Finding People, Businesses, Services | Libraries
| Reference Tools (dictionaries, etc.)
Search Engines | Using Search Tools
PART 2:
Evaluating Information
Evaluation Tutorials | Evaluation of Websites | How
To Know
Using Appropriate Resources | Scholarly Resources | Scholarly
Journal
Using Information
Documentation (citing
sources: attribution, incorporation, MLA/APA style, bibliography)
Fair Use (quotation, paraphrase, summary, plagiarism, APEx
formula)
HOW TO KNOW . In his online text, How To Know, Robert McHenry (editor at large for Encyclopaedia Britannica) begins with a remark by the American humorist Artemus Ward: "It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we do know that just ain't so." To provide a context for information literacy and research studies, reflection on how we think we know what we think we know is helpful. McHenry writes in his introduction:
The so-called "Information Age" in which we are said to be living is notoriously a time of information explosion and overload. Ask anybody. On the other hand, it is only occasionally noticed that this Information Age has not automatically made us all smarter. More information does not mean more knowledge, less error, better judgments. Those real benefits come only with effort and skill--thinking, in other words, and thinking well. To the contrary, there is evidence that the flood of cheap information has encouraged credulity. Certainly the Internet has made possible the mass distribution of the most arrant nonsense, which seems to find a waiting and willing audience.
Whether it is actually true that individuals are in fact and in feeling overwhelmed by masses of information and the consequent need to sort out the good from the bad, the possibly true from the likely false, the constant talk of it has begun to call renewed attention to a very old problem: What do we reliably know? What can we reliably know? How ought we to regard the many claims to knowledge that we confront, and would like to make, daily? . . .
How to Know considers the question of how we come to believe that we know things. What is this stuff we call knowledge, and where does it come from? How far can we trust it? If it is less than entirely reliable, what then? Most important, it argues that knowledge doesn't just happen--that each of us is actively involved in its construction--that we can do the work well or not well but will have to take responsibility for the outcome in either case. (How To Know) top
GENERAL INFORMATION LITERACY GUIDELINES. Introduction to Information Literacy from the Association of College and Research Libraries. top
INFORMATION COMPETENCY TUTORIALS:
- CSU, Cal
Poly, Information Competence Tutorials.
TOC: Define the Research Topic; Determine the Information Requirements for the Research Question; Locate and Retrieve Relevant Information; Use the Technological Tools For Accessing Information; Evaluate Information; Organize and Synthesize Information, Communicate Using a Variety of Information Technologies; Understand the Ethical, Legal, and Socio-Political Issues Surrounding Information and Information Technology; Use, Evaluate, and Treat Critically Information Received From the Mass Media (last updated March 1999) - Purdue CORE Research Tutorial. CORE stands for Comprehensive Online Research Education--a tutorial for developing an effective research strategy.
- Texas Information Literacy Tutorial (TILT).
An interactive tutorial written by Brent Simson, Clara Fowler, and Elizabeth Dupuis, sponsored by the University of Texas System Digital Library. "TILT is an educational Web site designed to introduce you to research sources and skills. The tutorial is organized in three modules [including an introduction, a list of key concepts and skills covered in the tutorial, a lecture, and a quiz] which you can complete in any order. Each one should take you 30 minutes. (Last updated 2003) top
RESEARCH STEPS. Two resources helpful as you begin your research are provided below:
- The Research Process. I recommend you review this helpful overview of the whole research process, written and designed by Marion Foerster of MiraCosta College.
- Seven Steps to Effective Research. Another helpful guide, from Cornell University. top
SEARCHING FOR AND FINDING INFORMATION
CLEARING HOUSES.
Clearing Houses are usually combination directories and search engines on specific
topics developed and maintained by experts in those topics or selected according to
standards for information architecture. Some clearing houses are listed here: The Argus Clearinghouse | Britannica | Infomine: Scholarly Internet Resource Collections
(University of California) | Librarians'
Index to the Internet (Berkeley Sunsite) | The Internet
Public Library | The WWW Virtual Library | top
DIRECTORIES, GENERAL.
Also called "Subject Trees," "Subject Catalogues," or
"Browsable Lists," Directories (like Yahoo) are alphabetically arranged subject
listings, with information entered into categories by the directory employees--using a
short description given by the Web authors or a description written by the directory's
editorial staff. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted. Here
are some of the more popular general directories:
Excite! |
Google | Lycos Top 5% of the Web | Yahoo!
| top
DIRECTORIES, SPECIAL. Some directories classify information in special subject-oriented databases, which you can search directly via keywords or which you can browse via author, title, subject, and/or filename lists.
- Abzu is a guide to a database of resources on the subject of the ancient Near East.
- The Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts
is a "collection of digital documents collected in the subject areas of English
literature, American literature, and Western philosophy."
The Scout Report gives this description of the site: "This catalog, maintained by Eric Lease Morgan, a systems librarian at North California State University, specializes in American literature, English literature, and philosophy. Alex is particularly helpful because the search interface allows researchers to both look for documents and search the content of those documents. Users first search standard fields such as author, title, or publication date; then they can search the content of documents they select from their returns list. Though returns in content searches would be more convenient were they hyperlinked to the complete record for the text, such a search nonetheless has obvious utility for someone writing on, for example, flower imagery in Shakespearean sonnets or Emerson's vision of democracy. Another nice feature of the catalog is the ability to convert documents to .pdf files on-the-fly (with the font and spacing customizable). Alternately, users can download the whole collection of American or English literature or philosophy texts and the tools to search the texts. [From the Scout Report (TK) Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-1998. http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/] - Diatoma is a database of materials for the study of women and gender in the ancient Mediterranean world.
- The Labyrinth is a directory for Medieval European Studies.
- The Perseus Project, described as "an evolving digital library" of ancient Greece. top
DISCUSSION GROUPS, NEWSGROUPS, CHAT.
Lizst, the amazing list directory, searches over
90,000 discussion groups online at <http://www.liszt.com/>.
This is also a browsable listing by topic of Internet mailing lists (like
Listserv Discussion Groups) you can join to find out about topics and includes information
about chats and newsgroups, for more informal discussion. top
FINDING PEOPLE, BUSINESSES, SERVICES:
555-1212.com | Big Book | Calendar Zone | Lookup USA | Maps of the
World (UTexas) | Switchboard | U.S. Gazeteer (maps)
| Who Where |
LIBRARIES. On the Internet, you can access virtual libraries:
Online Library Finders: Berkeley Digital Library | California Digital Library | Internet Public Library | Library of Congress | The Library Spot |
CDL--the California Digital Library: This is a gateway providing access to the online library catalogs of the University of California system, as well as digital resources (indexes and databases, electronic journals and texts, archival finding aids, and digitized photographs and images). The CDL is intended primarily for University of California users, but many resources are freely available to any who enter--though unless you enter from a participant Website you may not have access to indexes or to articles in electronic journals which require licensing agreements, such as MUSE and JSTOR. CDL also provides access to the Online Archive of California, a searchable database of archives and special collections departments in several California institutions such as Stanford, the California Historical Society, and the California State library.
You can also get partial access to or information about actual libraries. Your local libraries are the best sources of information in part because their collections have already been reviewed by experts in librarianship and in part because they are staffed by librarians, experts in the storage, access, retrieval, and critical thinking and use of information. Be sure you know you local libraries. For MiraCosta College in Oceanside, California, see the online connectors to local libraries below:
Local Library Finders: San Diego Libraries | MiraCosta College Library | Palomar College Library | CSU San Marcos Library | San Diego State University | UCSD (Roger) | UC-Systemwide (Melvyl) top
REFERENCE TOOLS:
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
| Research-It! |
Roget's Thesaurus |
Roget's Thesaurus II
(Bartleby site) | World Fact Book
(CIA) | WWW Virtual Library | WWWebster's Dictionary |
WWWebster's Thesaurus
top
SEARCH ENGINES. Search engines crawl the Web to find listings automatically; the search engine takes the words and phrases entered by the searcher and looks through the Internet for those words and phrases in page titles, body copy, and other elements. In this way, the search engine builds a database. Some of the more popular search engines are listed here: AltaVista | Excite | Google | HotBot | Infoseek | Lycos |
Meta-crawlers or meta-search engines search more than one search engine at a time. Metasearchers are not databases themselves, but they give access to multiple search engines: Dogpile | MetaCrawler | SavvySearch
For up-to-date information about search engines, consult Search Engine Watch. If you are unfamiliar with search engines, I recommend a search search tutorial is Bare Bones 101: A Very Basic Web Search Tutorial, created by Ellen Chamberlain, Head Librarian at the University of South Carolina-Beaufort campus. The tutorial is divided into 20 independent lessons, addressing topics such as meta-searchers, subject directories, evaluating sites, Boolean logic, and field searching. It also offers overviews of eight of the most popular search engines and ends with a list of more in-depth guides to searching the Internet. top
USING SEARCH TOOLS. To use a search engine skillfully, you should practice with keywords and Booleans. To select a search tool wisely depends on your purpose. Here are some good reviews for you, with general discussion of similarities and differences in the ways various search engines work (including information about Boolean searches):
- The Almost Compleat Web Searching Toolkit (handy handouts from Professor Araby Greene's Library 101 Research Class offered at the University of North Carolina at Asheville)
- Finding Information on the Internet: A Tutorial (UCBerkeley) and How to Choose the Search Tools You Need (a piece of the tutorial, UCBerkeley)
- How To Search the Web; A Guide to Search Tools (by Terry Gray at Palomar College)
- Recommended Sites and Search Techniques (U Albany, a nice tutorial)
- WWW Virtual Library Evaluation of Information Site
Created 31 July 1997, by Gloria Floren.
Revised 09 September 2006
Contents Copyright 1997-2006 All rights reserved Gloria L.
Floren.
Letters Department,
MiraCosta College, One Barnard Drive,
Oceanside, California 92056. U.S.A.
E-mail
gfloren@miracosta.edu