Definitions set #5

primary sources: an original fundamental and authoritative document pertaining to an event or subject of inquiry; the main source one uses in research or paper writing.

secondary sources: any document that describes an event, person, place, or thing. usually created by someone other than the event, person, place, or thing

tertiary sources: A selection, distillation, summary or compilation of primary sources, secondary sources, or both.

archives: any extensive record or collection of data. For example, the encyclopedia.

special collections: In library science, special collections is the name applied to a specific repository or department, usually within a library, which stores materials of a “special” nature, including rare books, archives, and collected manuscripts.

 

 

Works Cited

Dictionary.com. Dictionary. 28 Apr. 2009 <http://www.dictionary.com>.

Response to Eicher

After reading this piece by Eicher about primaryand secondary sources, it was a good follow up to the class period that we had, going to the special collections section of our library and seeing what it had to offer.  This article about primary sources, gives you a lot of information and fills in gaps about what a primary source is and how to use it.  Eiche talks about what makes a primary source a primary source and what you can look for to make sure that the source that you are using is primary and not maybe a secondary source.  This article applies specifically to our class because we need to know what a primary source is and how to look for one for research purposes.  As a political science major, this is a very helpful article because when researching for papers and presentations and things of that nature it is very helpful to know which sources fall in which

Definitions set #4

Open Access- A list or group of journals that are open to anyone to read. 

Annotation- A criticle explanatory note or or body of notes added to a text. 

Citation- the act of citing or quoting a reference to an authority or a precedent.

Scope- The range or variety of information there could be about a certain subject.

Authority- the power to determine, adjudicate, or otherwise settle issues or disputes; jurisdiction; the right to control, command, or determine.

 

Works Cited

Dictionary.com. 7 Apr. 2009. Dictionary.com. 7 Apr. 2009 <www.dictionary.com>.

Response to Lessig

The article that Lessig wrote was one about the way that big businesses use laws and basically money and power in their favor to get paid for having the copyright laws on certain things.  The example that was given was about a man that had made a small film and in that film had a clip of an episode of the simpsons playing on a TV in the background.  Just to be sure he contacted the creator of the show to ask if it was ok to show the clip in his show, the creator said that it was fine but to talk to the higher ups than him.  The climb up the ladder of getting permission to show the clip landed him at the door of Fox television company.  They charged him 10,000 dollars to use a four second clip of the simpson show.  And it was partly the law, and partly the fact that fox is a billion dollar company basically bullied the man into not being able to put that clip in his show and having to change things at the last minute.

In class response #3

For the past week or two, we have been working on an annotated bibliography assignment in and out of class.  this assignment requires us to find books and articles on a subject like we were going to write a paper, and then cite those sources and annotate them.  So far, the assignment hasn’t really been to difficult, I have found that I was misunderstanding some of the requirements or just didn’t get them completely at first.  After receiving my first part of the assignment back I feel that I have a better understanding of the assignment and what exactly is expected of us.  As far as the searching goes, I was having trouble finding books about my subject, which was technologies in the library, but I was eventually able to find a few and worked my way out of it.  Today in class, we started searching for articles on the Internet, in the library database.   I found this to be a little easier than looking for the books, although my searches didn’ t bring back a million results, the ones that did come back seem to be very useful and more relevant than the books I found.  Overall, the assignment has been an enlightening one, I never thought that finding information on a subject could be that difficult but it has proven to be just that.  I feel like I am learning from this assignment maybe more than I have learned from any other assignment this whole semester.  On the second part of this assignment, I hope to be more precise in my citing of materials and more thorough in my annotations, which I was unclear on at the beginning.

Response to Sherman and Price

In this article by Sherman and Price, there are a list of things about the internet and search engines that they find to be common misconceptions by the average person about the internet and search engines that are not entirely true.  For instance, the myth that the internet and search engines overlap and have the same information, making searching for information difficult almost like searching for a needle in a haystack.  This article shows that most of these assumptions are in fact myth and educate the person on what is truth and what is fiction.  This kind of an article relates to class because we use search engines and try to find different things on the internet, so anything that can give you pointers on how to make that easier would be helpful.  As a Political science Major it definitely applies to me because a lot of the things that I have to search for I use the internet for.

Response to O’leary

As I read the article by O’leary, I believe that this is the most relevant article that we have read this semester as far as being applicable to a college student.  This article was all about researching information, ways to manage and organize that information, and many other things about the research process.  In college, I can use information like this, simply because as a college student, I am constantly doing research, and having to find information on certain subjects.  And as a political science major, this definitely applies to me because there are a lot of papers involved with that major and tons of research that has to be done.  This article is very relevant to me just because I am always having to do research for many different classes and any tips on how to do that in a more timely and efficient fashion is valuable information to me.

Response to Stebbins

In this article about Plagiarism, and how to cite sources so as to avoid plagiarism, stebbins writes about plagiarism, citing sources, and how peer reviewed work isn’t necessarily plagiarism.  As far as learning something new from this article, I would have to say that I didn’t necessarily learn something new, more just learned more about the things that I already learned in class.  But I did learn a little something more about citing sources and ways to make sure that you are not plagiarising.  This article, is relevant to any college student, not necessarily just a student in this class because every student has to write papers and can use more knowledge about plagiarism and citing sources for papers and other assignments.  This has to do with much of my college career, as a political science major, I have to write many papers and have to cite everything in those papers, so reading an article like this one proves to be very helpful.

In class review #2

If I were sitting down telling a friend what I believed were the top three tips that I could give about searching the catalog at our library, it would be a tough thing to do.  One of the main things and the first tip that I would give, would be to have your subject and what you are looking for figured out when you go to use the catalog.  The second tip I could give would be if you are looking for literature about a certain narrow subject, search the catalog by subject, or use a Journal Title search, to narrow down the results.  My third and final tip would be to not stop searching after you have only used one search, there are ways that you are able to change around the words, and operators that you use that could produce better or more relevant results. 

If I had to give three tips that can help someone when searching in google, I would start with the fact that you need to know everything that comes up on google isn’t necessarily credible information or doesnt necessarily come from a reliable source so keep an eye out for that.  The second tip I would offer would be when you search in google, know that the results that show up at the top of the list of results are probably going to be your best bet when using information so dont stray to far off those top few results.  The third tip would be make sure you know the source that the information you use is coming from, make sure that it is reliable and that you could use it in a paper, or some other sort of assignment. 

When using google as a search engine, there are many pro’s and con’s to using the website.  For example, one of the many up-sides to using google, is that you can find a wide variety of information on a certain subject when you search for it.  But the bad part about that is, a lot of the information that you find may not be very helpful or relevant to what you are looking for, also probably doesn’t come from a very reliable source.  Also another thing about google that is pretty cool, is when you go into the google maps part of the web site, you can search your address in google street view and you can see your house or the area that you are looking for right there on the web site.   But there is a negative side to that, you could be seen on the street view and you may not want that.  Many people thought it was an invasion of privacy and shouldn’t be allowed.

Definitions set #3

Peer review- When experts on a certain field look over work that is to be published and make sure that it is credible and true. 

Stop words- A frequently used word such as a, or, the, that is not indexed in web pages and thus is not used in search engine queries. 

Databases- A collection of data that is arranged for ease and speed of search.

Citation Databases- A database of information about citations from certain sources.

Citation and Abstract Databases- A collection of information about a specific field or type of information.

Full text Databases-  A collection of information that can be accessed with the whole document there.

Wikis- Databases that can be edited by anyone. 

Interlibrary Loan- A system that works in a way that if UNCW doesn’t have a piece of literature in their library they can put in a request to another library and get it from them in a matter of days. 

World cat- A database that acts as a catolog for the world.

Microforms- an arrangement of images reduced in size such as microfilm or microfiche. o

Boolean Operators- operators that perform logical and negative operations in a search. 

Works Cited

Dictionary.com. 1 Mar. 2009. Dictionary. 1 Mar. 2009 <www.dictionary.com>.