unit 7

ines/Journals Primary/Secondary Periodical Indexes 2. From the Library Web Site, select FIND and articles and databases, this takes you to page with an alphabetical list of databases and on the right hand side the Librarian Tips area lists the popular databases; start with either ProQuest Research Library Complete or EBSCOhost Academic Search 3. Refer to the comment I left in your blog post for Unit 6 (where you wrote the search statement for your topic). I may have suggested revisions or options for your search statement. If so, play around with your original and my revisions and see if there are any differences. You will likely revise this statement even more as you progress through the assignment and build your vocabulary. Enter your search statement in the database. Examine the results. Did your search statement retrieve relevant results? Did you get too few results? Too many? Revise your search if necessary, taking time to play around with different words and ways to combine them. 4. Focus on types of articles. Once you have a search that seems to be effective, Locate three different types of articles – credible and relevant to your topic -- as follows: a) One article from a popular magazine b) One research article from a scholarly journal. Examine the article to make sure it is a research article, and not a book review, editorial, etc. c) One article from a newspaper (ProQuest is the best database for newspaper articles). Refer to the information in the IRIS Tutorial (popular/scholarly) if you need a refresher. The images show how to limit: For each of your three articles, use the citation tools in the databases to get a rough citation. Choose MLA format. But be WARNED: Database-generated citations will create a citation that’s pretty close to “correct.” but for most college classes you will likely need to tweek citations to make them conform to a format that your instructor specifies. Because this activity is focusing on search techniques and types of sources, the citation provided by the databases is close enough for this assignment. 5. Post an entry (or entries) in your blog that document/s: 1. The successful search statement you used. Include the actual format as well as any search modes you might have chosen. 2. Citation for an article in a popular magazine article, and an annotation: What’s an annotation? An annotation is a short paragraph, 2-3 sentences, addressing why you chose this article. The annotation can address the evaluation criteria you learned about in Unit 4. The annotation should not be a mini-summary of the article, rather, you’re explaining why it’s worth looking at. One good way to start an annotation is, “I chose this article because…” You do not need to read the article to write an annotation. A quick skim is sufficient. Even an article that’s not full text provides enough information to let you know if it would be useful. By the way, a list of citations is called a bibliography. A list of citations that each has an annotation is called an annotated bibliography. Here is a page with tips on this topic. It’s on the library webpage (FIND, How to…, Annotated bibliography: Tips for writing). 3. Citation for a research article in a scholarly journal, and an annotation. The annotation for this citation should include a brief discussion noting three things that identify this as a research article. 4. Citation for an article from a newspaper, and an annotation. 5. A paragraph summarizing this activity, including a discussion on how your search statement, concepts, words, etc changed (or did not change) as you worked through the activity.

unit 9

The search engine that I am using is Google and the topic I am researching is Ayn Rand. Search one ayn rand site:.gov Library of Congress The Thoughts of Ayn Rand Library Receives Collection of Author's Handwritten Essays May 2003 6-20-2012 http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0305/random.html This site is credible because of the authority, Library of Congress and the purpose, to describe a new collection of writings by Ayn Rand in a neutral way. ayn rand site:.com The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z Wednesday, June 20, 2012 http://aynrandlexicon.com/ This site is not very likely to be credible especially when it comes to a controversial topic like Ayn Rand. The editor of the book that the website promotes was a long time friend of Rand and therefore he may not be able to present an unbiased viewpoint. ayn rand site:.edu Ayn Rand on the Virtue of Selfishness Tuesday, February 10, 1998 http://brindedcow.umd.edu/140/rand.html © copyright Allen Stairs, 1997 This site appears to be that of a college student who has posted an assignment on Ayn Rand. He argues against many of the ideals that Rand was known for. For this reason, I believe this site is not credible. Also, the author provides no citations, no links to sources. ayn rand site:.org Ayn Rand Institute http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=index The Ayn Rand Institute is considered to be the foremost authority on all things AR. And they do have an enormous collection of writings and links to her work as well as the work of others in Objectivism, the philosophy founded on AR's principles. The site does however only publish information that serves it's purpose of promoting the works of AR. No contrary viewpoints are to be found. I think that it is valuable to be able to search for specific top level domains. I found that the only results I felt were trustworthy were the .gov sites. This would make Ayn Rand roll over in her grave! The sites that I found within the other searches seemed to be far more likely to have the purpose of trying to sway opinion one way or another. If I were really researching a topic, I would try all of them top level domains to see what sort of results I could get.

Final exam

The Future of Print: The Book

This was not an easy title to find! First, I had to determine what Feliciter was. A bit of searching told me that it’s a publication put out by the Canadian Library Association. I was able to locate the journal by searching the database on the CLA.CA website. Full text versions of all of the issues of this journal are available online. The link to this particular journal is here: http://www.cla.ca/Content/NavigationMenu/Resources/Feliciter/PastIssues/2011/Feliciter5Vol57_w.pdf

Authority- Distad is a librarian at the University of Alberta. He is also the author of a few books. This would make him a good authority on the topic of the future of books.
Sources- Distad draws on some interesting sources for his article. Most are historical references to past perceptions that books would be replaced by some newer technology.
Purpose- Distad is arguing that e-books and readers will not replace the printed book, but will exist along side it.
Coverage- Distad covers the topic, but in a superficial way. He doesn't go into real statistics to back up his claims that books are in no danger.
Timeliness- This article is less than 1 year old, so still very relevant to the topic.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Are books dead, and can authors survive?

I typed the full title of the article into a Google search. The first result was for the full text Guardian article.

Authority- The article was written by Ewan Morrison, a well-known Scottish author. I believe that would make him an authority on books and the future of books. However this fact can also make his opinions biased.
Sources- Morrison quotes many sources and statistics in this article. He is sure to note where the information that he is using comes from. Some of his sources include Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Wired Magazine, all of whom are reputable sources.
Purpose- Morrison’s purpose with this article is to share statistics about what happens when a particular medium goes digital and to predict the future of the printed book based on those statistics. Evenness- the overall tone of the article seems to be even. 
Coverage- Morrison was very thorough in the coverage of the topic. He even went so far as to touch on the porn industry and the effect the Internet has had on it’s sales over the years.  
Timeliness- The article is less than a year old, it is very timely.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Future of Print: The Book

In this article, the author, Merrill Distad, discusses why he feels that the printed book is in no danger of becoming a relic of the past. He draws upon several historical sources to show times when men have feared that the book would be replaced by some new technology. He argues that because this had not come to pass any of those times, it surely will not come to pass now.

He feels that people have such a strong emotional connection to books that they would never be able to let them go. I think he wrong on this point. I think as we become more connected and dependent on technology in the future, we will move away from single use items like books. Why would a person choose to carry boxes and boxes of books, when they can have all of their books with them at once in a device that weighs about a half pound.

He also argues that college students would not want e-books because they could not sell them back at the end of the semester. I would really like to see statistics for this assertion. I disagree with him on this point very strongly. As a college student, I would purchase all of my text books as e-books if that option were available to me and the price was fair. I believe that e-books should cost less than half that of print books because the cost of production and distribution is almost nothing.

Distad does make a very good point about children and literacy however. I would agree that it is vital for development for children to have books at a very young age. But does this exclude e-readers? I can see this going either way. Children today begin using computers as early as 3, an e-reader could be adapted to be usable by a small child. I don't know that there is anything about a book that could not be gained through an e-book.

I think that Distad is correct in that tree books will not be replaced e-books. Not all of them any way. There will always be print books, but e-books will most likely become the way of the future. Portability and convergent technology is the way of the future.

Unit 8

In your blog, please let me know the name of the search tool, and teach me about 5 search features of this search tool. You only need to do this for ONE search tool per column from that page.

1. Search tools - Gigablast.
Gigablast has a new feature called Event Guru, the largest event search engine in the U.S. It claims to be 90% wind powered. It is a human powered search engine, so all of the content is added by users. This is similar to wikipedia, but instead of being a dictionary, it's a search engine. The  advanced search feature will allow you to refine your search as follows,

Search for...
all of these words
this exact phrase
and this exact phrase
any of these words
none of these words
In this language:
Restrict to this URL
Pages that link to this URL
Site Clustering	yes   no
Number of summary excerpts	0   1   2   3   4   5
Results per Page	10  20  30  40  50  100
Restrict to these Sites

2. Metasearch tools - Meta Crawler. MetaCrawler seems to search several search engines at once for specific items. It compiles all of the top hits from all of the major search engines. It also allows users to refine their searches to videos, images, shopping etc. Dogpile and infoseek are other examples of meta crawlers.

3. Subject directories - Subject directories are online collections that
 organize resources by subject. Most seem to be linked to specific libraries. There are some that are for searching the Library of Congress and others that will let you search the deep web for things that are not readily accessible by using a regular search Engine like Google. CompletePlanet is a deep web search engine. It will search over 70,000 databases and specialty search engines. The topics it will search are

Agriculture	Games & Hobbies	Military	Religion
Arts & Design	Government	Music	Science
Business	Health	News	Search Engines
Computing & Internet	Home & Garden	Newspapers	Shopping
Education	Humanities	People	Social Sciences
Energy	Jobs & Careers	Places	Sports
Engineering	Law	Politics	Transportation
Environment	Literature	Products & Technology	Travel
Family	Living things	Recreation	Weather
Finance & Economics	Magazines & Journals	References

unit 6

 Will presidential election reform solve the issues with the Electoral College and the popular vote?
election and reform and "Electoral College" and "popular vote" 

 Does television advertising by the pharmaceutical industry have an impact on prescription drug abuse?
 "television advertising" and pharmaceutical and (industry or compan*) and "prescription drug abuse"
 Does anti-smoking advertising by the tobacco industry lead to increased smoking among youth?
"anti-smoking advertising" and (tobacco or cigarette) and (industry or compan*)  and (increas* or ris*) and smoking and (youth or kids or children)

 Target often forces musicians to alter lyrics in order to have their CDs sold in Target stores. Is this censorship?
Target and musicians and censorship

 What are the similarities between the Great Depression of the 1930s and the current economic problems?
similarities and "Great Depression" and "current economic problems"

part 2

How do social media sites use your personal information?
"social media" and "personal information"

unit 5

Cannell Library

Search term used: Social Media Privacy

Citation information: Author: Costigan, Sean S.
Title: Cyberspaces and Global Affairs [electronic resources]
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2012

Subject headings: Information Technology, Internet-political aspects, Internet and international relations, Mass media and international relations, political science.

This is an e-book

Is the book credible? Yes, it appears to be credible. It's a collection of scholarly essays by experts in their fields.

Summit Search

Search term used: social media privacy

Citation information:
Author: Christian Fuchs; et al
Title: Internet and Surveillance : the challenges of Web 2.0 and social media
Publisher: New York : Routledge, 2012.

Format: Book 

Subject headings: Information Technology, Internet - social aspects, electronic surveillance, social media, privacy, right of, data protection, internet, world wide web


Is the book credible? Yes, it appears to be credible. It's primary source research done by a scholar.


IT Pro - Well the IT PRO collection has turned out to be one of the coolest things ever. There are so many titles listed that are relevant and interesting to me. SO MANY. I wouldn't even know where to start. I wish that there was a way to add them to my Kindle as that is how I do most of my reading now. It's nice that I can organize the books into a folder so that I can add books that I'd like to read down the road. I like that it's set up in a way that lets you search by publisher as well as subject. I really enjoy the O'reily books and it was cool to be able to look through them and see the titles Ive wanted to read for some time now.

Google Books- Search Term used: Social, media, privacy

Citation information for the book: (author, title, city of publication, publisher, publication date)
The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet
Solove, D.J. http://books.google.com/books?id=F6liiKZwX_oC
2007 Yale University Press

What clues does Google Books provide that lead you to believe this book is trustworthy? The fact that this book is published by Yale University Press leads me to believe that it is trustworthy.


Summary - I learned a lot in this assignment. I've used college libraries and Summit Search before, so that portion was not new to me. But the portions on IT PRO and Google books was very useful. I had never explored either of them, but have a feeling that I will be using both over and over.

Unit 4

1) Is a vegetarian diet healthier than a meat-based diet?
     A scholarly journal would be the most useful because the research is in-depth and the authors are experts in their field.

2) Target often forces musicians to alter lyrics in order to have their CDs sold in Target stores. Is this censorship?
    Popular magazines would be the most useful because the information would be recent and well researched, especially if it's a magazine about music news such as Rolling Stone.

3) How much more can a college graduate expect to earn over someone with a high school diploma?
    The Department of Education website would be the most useful to find this because it would have data listed in the website. And because it is a DoE website, it can be trusted.

4) Should educators use commercial services to combat plagiarism?
     A scholarly journal would be the most useful because it would be written by professionals in the field and well researched and possibly peer reviewed.

5) Is the current lack of sunspot activity affecting global warming?
    A popular magazine such as Science would be the most useful because it would have the most current research and information.

1. How do social media sites use your personal information?
    Popular magazines would be the most useful because this topic is so new that books and journals may not be as up to date with current information.

2. How can things you post on social media sites come back to haunt you?
    Websites would be the most useful because the may contain personal anecdotes from people who have had experience with their social media information being used in a bad way.

3. Is the government watching you online?
    Academic journals would be the most useful because the authors are scholars and have done all the primary research on the topic. 

Unit 3 Summary

In this unit, I learned about selecting a research topic. I learned how to use the Clark College Library website to get into the "deep web" to access databases of publications that are not found through Google searches. By accessing these databases, I was able find articles on the topic I was researching and to narrow down the focus of my research. This helped me to formulate some potential topic questions for my paper. I read about the pitfalls of using Wikipedia as a source for research and how it's fine to skim Wikipedia articles for ideas and sources for articles, but that the information there should not be trusted. This is because there is no way of knowing who authors any particular author and anyone can add or remove information.

3 research questions

1. How do social media sites use your personal information?
2. How can things you post on social media sites come back to haunt you?
3. Is the government watching you online?

Open Web: Wikipedia

The topic that I have selected to research is "privacy". The author of the article is impossible to determine as the article has been edited over 2000 times by countless people.
The source used to find this article is Wikipedia. Here is a link to it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy
The citation for this article using AP style would look like this: Privacy. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved April 28, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy

Unit 3: Research

The topic I chose for this assignment was "privacy". I used Gale Virtual Reference Library to explore articles on this topic. Some keywords and ideas on this topic are Google, Internet, security, safety, terrorism, anonymous, personal information, corporations, employers, police, Homeland Security, government, monitoring, social media, Facebook, Twitter, tracking, targeted and ethics. The citation information for the article that I chose from GVRL is as follows: Kisselburgh, Lorraine G. "Networks, Privacy in." Encyclopedia of Social Networks. Ed. George A. Barnett. Vol. 2. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Reference, 2011. 629-634. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 30 Apr. 2012.

Unit 2: 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.

Does not require a citation

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 is a paraphrase and therefore needs to have it's source documented.

3. I find it ridiculous that 57% of high school students think their teachers assign too much homework.

The source of the statistic needs to be quoted.

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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 surface type of social analysis that concerns itself only with effects and doesn't deal with root causes.

This is just re-writing Dr. Kings words. It would need to be cited. 

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 looks fine to me

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."

no additional citation should be needed
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7. My friend Kara told me that she loves living so close to the ocean.

this does not need to be cited.

8. Americans are guaranteed the right to freely gather for peaceful meetings.

should probably cite the part of the constitution that guarantees this right.

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 Most would agree that plagiarism is wrong and will try to avoid including copied materials in their papers. However, it's not always easy to know when you are plagiarizing someone else's words. If you read an article and then summarize what you've read, even in your own words, you are guilty of plagiarizing. In order to prevent plagiarism in your papers, be sure to include the source for any words, thoughts or ideas that are not your own. Referring to a style manual is a great way to check and see if you need a citation and how to properly format it. When all else fails and you still have doubts whether or not something needs to be cited, check with a librarian or your instructor.

First assignment

Our first assignment is to create a blog using Blogger. This was pretty easy for me since I have been using Blogger for many years. I didn't learn anything new about setting up a blog. I like the idea of using Blogger and this blog as a means of doing my assignments. I think one difference between having a blog to hold assignments as opposed to doing them on paper will be the easy access to each assignment. No paper to loose. Working in this format will be nice for me since I am used to creating blog posts, posting on FaceBook and Twitter.