Unit 8: Search Engines and Websites

Good Afternoon! Here are my results to the questions posed for this assignment.

Regards,

Carrie

SEARCH TOOLS/ BING: Bing seemed to be a site which would be easy to use for searching.  However, I really did not like the format and it wasn’t very user friendly.  I found it to be a copycat of Google’s format.  I wouldn’t use this website at all.  If I’m surfing the web, I’d go with Google.  I would not use it to gain information for a research paper.    

AND CONCEPTS--“Common words, such as “a,” “and,” and “the” are ignored unless you use quotation marks around them. For example, "a" car, "and" car, or "the" car.” You don't have to type the word AND between your search words. By default, all searches are AND searches.”

OR CONCEPTS—“Use the OR and NOT keywords to combine or exclude words. For example, if you use tree NOT evergreen, you will get results for trees but not for evergreen trees. “

TRUNCATION SYMBOL/STEMMING: Bing uses the symbol “+” for truncating and stemming. “finds webpages that contain all the terms preceded by the + symbol”.

PHRASES IN QUOTATION MARKS—“Search for exact phrases by placing the search words within quotation marks. For example, "short evergreen tree."

LIMIT TO CERTAIN FIELDS—Use advanced search guidelines, “At the top right of your search results page, click Advanced to open the advanced search box. Choose the parameters of your search. You can look for results by: using AND, OR, NOT and limiting your search to specific sites.

METASEARCH TOOLS/ IXQUICK   : I thought IXQuicks style was easy to use, particularly the advanced search tab.  I really liked that it is a “private” search engine.  I also liked that it searches through various popular search engines, not just one. The only thing I saw missing is that it didn’t use truncation or stemming techniques.  I do think this search tool would be beneficial for a research project; but its probably not as credible as Infomine.

AND CONCEPTS--“ Place the word AND between two words or phrases that must be included. Ixquick will only return pages that contain all those words.
If some words are mandatory but others are optional, place the + before only the mandatory words (for example, green +jello +pudding if you are less concerned about the color but are aching for a tasty jello pudding).”

OR CONCEPTS— Construct complex queries by mixing ands, ors and nots within parentheses. A search for adopt AND (beagle OR terrier) would find pages with the words adopt and beagle, or adopt and terrier, or possibly all three words.”

TRUNCATION SYMBOL/STEMMING: No truncation symbol or stemming information was disclosed on the website.

PHRASES IN QUOTATION MARKS—“ Place a phrase in quotes if all the words need to appear together as a phrase, and not scattered about the page. For example, a search for "south park" is more likely to find websites devoted to the violent television show South Park and less likely to find pages about parks located in the south of France.”

LIMIT TO CERTAIN FIELDS—“ Specify where certain information must appear with fields. Currently supported fields include:

title: page title must contain this text domain: page must be located at a .com or .gov or .edu or .uk (etc.) computer host: page must be located on this specified computer or on more specific computers (e.g. host:nytimes.com will retrieve pages on nytimes.com and on www.nytimes.com) url: find pages with specified text anywhere within the url, e.g. url:uk will find http://abc.com/pics/uk.html as well as http://www.uk/. Link, page must contain a hyper link for which at least one of the words in the destination address begins with specified text”.

SUBJECT DIRECTORIES/ INFOMINE: I liked Infomine’s library style.  Interestingly it was “built” by librarians.  This would be a great site to visit to get scholarly or other credible information.  It allows you to get information on various genres of academic information.  I would check this site out to get any credible information.  In response to the search terms, see below.

AND CONCEPTS—Infomine uses the AND concepts with the wording AND or the + symbol.

OR CONCEPTS—Infomine uses the OR concepts.

TRUNCATION SYMBOL/STEMMING: Infomine uses the standard (*) symbol for truncating and stemming.  

PHRASES IN QUOTATION MARKS—Infomine uses the standard quotation marks for phrases as well as using “the "pipe" symbol... usually on the \ key.”

LIMIT TO CERTAIN FIELDS—Infomine uses advanced search guidelines. Here you can search various fields, subjects and resources.

Unit 7: Periodical Indexes

Good Afternoon! Here is my post for unit 7.

My Question:  What is the history of censorship?

My Search Phrases: histor* and censor*

1) Article from a Popular Magazine:

Miller, Joshua. "Self-Rule: A Cultural History of American Democracy." America 1996: 26-. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 23 July 2012.

This popular magazine article was found in the publication, "America". It reviews censorship in the context of American democracy and was very appropriate for my topic.

2) Research article from a scholarly Journal:

Hanna, Robert C. Censorship Of Written Curricular Materials In Public Schools: An Historical Investigation Of Legal Parameters. 1993. ERIC. Web. 23 July 2012.

This research article found in a scholarly journal was right in line with my topic of history and censorship.  It reviews the legal implications of censorship in the public school system.

3) Newspaper Article:

Stone, Geoffrey R. "What You can't Say Will Hurt You." New York Times: A.17. Los Angeles Times; National Newspapers Core; New York Times. Aug 15 2005.  Web. 23 July 2012.

Finding a historically based newspaper article on the subject of censorship was difficult.  However, I did find this one entitled, “What You can’t Say Will Hurt You”.  It is a brief review of censorship in the U.S. from the 1940’s forward.

I found this assignment to be somewhat challenging.  However, after some time, I felt more comfortable with searching, particularly in advanced formats.  It was beneficial to be able to filter many results by format and other pertinent items.  I was a bit more comfortable using Proquest rather than EBSCO.  I also found that scholarly articles resulted in more searchable items than the magazine or newspaper format

Unit 6: Boolean searching part 2

Here is my personal research topic assignment:

My Research Topic:

• What is the history of censorship?
• histor* and censor*

Unit 6: Boolean searching part 1

Good Afternoon: I gathered so much useful information from this unit.  Below is my assignment submittal Part 1.

Practice Topics:

• Will presidential election reform solve the issues with the Electoral College and the popular vote?
• “presidential election reform” and “electoral college” and “popular vot*”

• Does television advertising by the pharmaceutical industry have an impact on prescription drug abuse?
• “television advertis*” and “pharmaceutic* industry” and “prescription drug abuse”

• What are the similarities between the Great Depression of the 1930s and the current economic problems?
•  similar*  and “Great Depression” and “current econom*” and problems

• Debate the pros and cons of fish farming
•  pros  and  cons  and “fish farm*”

• Has the U.S. trade and globalization policy hurt the middle class?
• “U.S. trad*” and “global* polic*” and “middle class”

Unit 5: Databases and Books

Good Afternoon:
Here are my results and resposnses from Unit 5's assignments regarding databases and books.

Cannell Library Book Catalog:
Search Term Used: Plagiarism
Citation Information: Andrea Lunsford,  Perspectives on Plagiarism and Intellectual Property in a Postmodern World, Lisa Buranen and Alice M. Roy, editors. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999.
Subject Headings: Plagiarism or Intellectual Property.
Circulating Book or E Book? Circulating Book
Location and Call Number of Book? PN167. P47. 1999
Clues for Credibility?  Sources are listed, Relevant Title, Publisher is a University Press.

Summit Catalog:
Search Term Used: Plagiarism
Citation Information: Watkins, Heidi. Plagiarism. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2008. Print.
Subject Headings: Plagiarism or Kopieren
Circulating Book or E Book? Circulating Book
Location and Call Number of Book? 191758474
Clues for Credibility?  Sources are listed, Relevant Title, Recent Publication.
How Did This Search Differ From the Search in the Cannell Library Book Catalog? Surprisingly, I was able to find much more relevant information from this search.

IT PRO Collection of E-Books
Search Term Used: Home PC
I found IT PRO to be somewhat confusing and difficult to access.  However, the site did pull up a lot of information referring to computer software systems, 2112 Sources.  When using advanced searches, I lost some of the information.  When I used the following combinations, I was given the following results:
General Info/ All Words produced 74 sources and ISBN/ All Words, Authors and Publishers produced  0 sources. 

Google Books:
Search Term Used: Plagiarism
Citation Information: Posner, Richard A.. The Little Book of Plagiarism. New York: Random House, 2007.  Digital.
Subject Headings: Plagiarism 
Circulating Book or E Book? E Book
Location and Call Number of Book? 346.04'82-dc22
Clues for Credibility?  Relevant Title, Authority as the author is a Judge, Published recently in 2007.

This was a very labor intensive project unit.  I found that I really liked using the Summit Catalog the best; as it was very user friendly.  Summit also produced information which would have been usable for my subject of plagiarism.  I did not like using IT PRO as it was a bit confusing to navigate.  I felt as if Google Books was the least credible source and offered mainly e books rather than print.  Overall, I'd utilize either Summit or Cannell's catalog if I were to do more research on plagiarism.

Unit 4: Types of Information

Good Evening!
Here are the sources which I would utilize for the following research questions.

Practice Questions:
1) Is a vegetarian diet healthier than a meat-based diet?  I would use scholarly or academic journals to address this topic.  Because, it is a topic where research has already been done, I will want to utilize the journals to find out what research has taken place and what results have been discovered.
2) Target often forces musicians to alter lyrics in order to have their CDs sold in Target stores. Is this censorship? I would use a subject encyclopedia to address this question.  I will want to get background information on censorship.  Because this is also a popular topic, I may want to look at magazines.
3) How much more can a college graduate expect to earn over someone with a high school diploma? This is a statistical question.  I will want to use reference books, statistical web sites, scholarly journals or books.  Obviously statistical web sites will offer some information.  Reference books and scholarly journals will offer in depth information.
4) Should educators use commercial services to combat plagiarism? I would use a scholarly or academic journal to address this topic.  Because research has already been done, I will utilize journals to find out what how effective the use of commercial services on plagiarism has been. 
5) Is the current lack of sunspot activity affecting global warming?  Again, I would want to use a scholarly or academic journal.  Thus I would use the in depth information presented.  I could also use a book as it would allow me to view in depth information on the topic.

My questions:
1) What is the history of censorship?  I would want to use a book or e book for this question.  This would allow me to get in depth information and a historical perspective on the topic of censorship.
2) What types of censorship are there? I would want to use a subject encyclopedia to get thorough background information on this topic.
3) How do various countries participate in censorship?  I will use a subject encyclopedia to get background information and then utilize books to get in depth information as well historical information.

Unit 3: Summary

Good Afternoon:

This activity in Unit 3 was very insightful.  I've always known that Wikipedia is not a reputable source and most of the time information from it has not been allowed in my courses.  I found it interesting that the specific citation for it quoted, "Wikipedia should be used for background information...a starting point for further research." I had no idea what a "wiki" was; so I was pleased to learn that it is a public contribution tool.  I was shocked to learn that anyone can edit these articles and information. 

I also found the topics in IRIS interesting; particularly the one which references digital notes.  I'm not sure how adept I would be at that format (as I'm a bit old fashioned) but I think it would be interesting to investigate. Finally, the deep web section was very informative, particularly learning about bots, spiders and crawling.  (Sounds kinda creepy/ crawly!) I'm familiar with the Clark library search tools; but it was a good refresher.  Overall, very useful and informative!

-Carrie

Unit 3: Three Research Questions.

Good Afternoon,

Three research questions I to focus and narrow my topic of censorship include the following:

1)  What is the history of censorship?
2)  What types of censorship are there?
3)  How do various countries participate in censorship?

Unit 3: Articles/ Gale & Wikipedia

Good Afternoon!

I visited the Gale Virtual Reference Library in search of my topic, Censorship.
Keywords I gathered include the following:
Freedom, Restraint, Suppression, Control, First Amendment, Repression, Regulatory, Expression, Forms, History, Censure, Government, Speech, Literature, Art, Music.
One article which looked interesting is cited as follows:
Title: Censorship
Author: Leigh Kimmel, Ph.D.
Title of Source: Encyclopedia of Politics
Publisher, City, Date of Publication: Sage Reference, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2005
Page Numbers: 573-576

I also visited Wikipedia in search of my topic, Censorship.
Keywords I gathered include the following:
Creative Censorship, Self Censorship, Religion, Approval, Education, Secrets, Prevention, Political, Rational, Internet, Film, Books, Reasons, Country, Forms.
The article on Censorship, is difficult to cite in the correct format, although when I did find how to cite it, I was given the following information:
Title: Censorship
Author:  Wikipedia Contributors
Title of Source: Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
Publisher, City, Date of Publication: N/A, N/A, 9, Jul. 2012.
Page Numbers: N/A

Unit 2: Plagiarism

Good Evening!  Here is my update for our assignment relating to plagiarism.

1. Last summer, my family and I traveled to Chicago, which was quite different from the rural area I grew up in. We saw the dinosaur Sue at the Field Museum, and ate pizza at Gino's East.
This example is correct and there is no need to provide a citation as it is a personal statement.  Thus it is congruent with the requirements which do not require acknowledgement.

2. Americans want to create a more perfect union; they also want to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for everybody.
This example is correct and there is no need to provide a citation as it is a personal statement. Thus it is congruent with the requirements which do not require acknowledgement.  If the statement however, does belong to someone else, than proper acknowledgement and citation is required.

3. I find it ridiculous that 57% of high school students think their teachers assign too much homework.
This example is not cited correctly.  There is a specific statistic relayed which is not common knowledge thus it must be attributed to proper citation. 

Numbers 4, 5, and 6 all refer to the following passage from Martin Luther King's "Letter from the Birmingham Jail":

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

4. Martin Luther King was certain that nobody would want to be contented with a surfacy type of social analysis that concerns itself only with effects and doesn't deal with root causes.
This is not cited correctly.  The above example is a summary of the letter written by King.  Thus proper in text citation as well as end of paper citation must be included.

5. Martin Luther King wrote that the city of Birmingham's "white power structure" left African-Americans there "no alternative" but to demonstrate ("Letter from the Birmingham Jail" para. 5).
This example is cited correctly, assuming that at the end of the paper there is a full citation provided.  The example properly shows the quotes being surrounded by quotation marks.  The in text citation also provides the proper information in giving proper acknowledgement.

6. In "Letter from the Birmingham Jail," King writes to fellow clergy saying that although they "deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham, your statement fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations."
This example is not cited correctly.  Although King's quotes are enclosed in quotation marks; there is no in text citation.  If there is no end of paper citation, that too needs to be provided.

7. My friend Kara told me that she loves living so close to the ocean.
This example is correct and there is no need to provide a citation as it is a personal statement. Thus it is congruent with the requirements which do not require acknowledgement.

8. Americans are guaranteed the right to freely gather for peaceful meetings.
This example is correct and there is no need to provide a citation as it is a personal statement. Thus it is congruent with the requirements which do not require acknowledgement. If the statement however, does belong to someone else, than proper acknowledgement and citation is required.

The information pertaining to plagiarism is very thorough.  It is imperative that one gives credit where credit is due to avoid plagiarism.  There are few instances where this is not necessary; those being information which is common knowledge or which is your "idea, discovery and reasonings".  Information which you must properly acknowledge by citation includes "1)direct quotations, 2) parpahrases and summaries, 3) arguable assertions, 4) statistics, charts, tables and graphs and 5) images, photos and graphics." 
Utilizing a style manual is a handy guide which familiarizes you with rules regarding citations.  The information provided in IRIS also thoroughly addresses various citation styles which include MLA and APA.  Several interesting bits of information which I was unaware of where that all graphs, charts, tables or any graphic material must be cited, even if you have created it yourself.  Another tricky plagiarism topic addresses paraphrasing or summarizing others information and statements; just because we use different language does not take the need away from proper acknowledgement.
It is my advice to myself and others, if you are in doubt, cite anyways, just to be safe.

First Posting

Wow! I absolutely loved this assignment! It was so fun creating a blog; a project I've never done before.  It was much easier than I had anticipated.  I enjoyed coming up with a creative blog name and template.  I'm looking forward to the posting process.  I learned that with a few clicks of a button, I'm off and running in the internet blogging world!

I would imagine that a digital work space verses a paper one, is similar to using email rather than paper in business.  I would also imagine that you are able to reach a far larger audience, operate more quickly and efficiently and access a vast supply of stored data.

I am a member of Facebook; which I utilize mainly for religious and political postings as well as family communications.  It's incredible the number of people which we are able to reach with web methods.  Now for the end of my post; I'm not quite sure how to "sign off" a blog, so until next time I'll just say,

Adieu,

Carrie