CT231: Research & search skills

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Notes for Week 3 of CT231 Professional Skills, with some advice on why/when to use various search engines; how to validate search results; and being aware of the limitations of personalised search results.

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Stages of Research

Define the research question

(THINK before you SEARCH)

Read & Refine

Read selectively, actively, critically

Research Tools

Search engines, Wikipedia

Google Scholar

Advanced Search

Library resources:Books,

Electronic journals,

Databases

Read Selectively

• select the LATEST / CURRENT

• select the most RELEVANT

• select by RELIABILITY(e.g. Source? Bias? Bibliography?)

• select by AMOUNT

www. cnn.com

How to read a URL

domain name

nike.com

rte.ie

bbc.co.uk

gla.ac.uk

mit.edu

moma.org

How to read a URL: domain names

www.cdsinet.net/users/bartlett

www.alphalink.com.au/~jdm/index.htm

www.splcenter.org

www.crusader.net

What do these URLS tell you?

R Read the URL

E Examine the content

A Check out the site Author / Owner

L Look at the links

How to validate information on the web

Check out the Wayback Machine at:

www.archive.org

SEARCH: some questions...

1. How do I find recent articles?

2. How do I find Irish examples?

3. How do I find recent journal articles?

4. How do I get full text of articles, if not available on Google Scholar?

search...there’s more!

CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 catd_mitchell

Personalised search means that the search results we are served are based on what we have clicked on in the past...

Search technologies make the world's information “universally accessible”, as Google's motto puts it, but it is not “making universal knowledge universally accessible”.

Siva VaidhyanathanThe Googlization of Everything

Eli Pariser (2011) The Filter Bubble

www.thefilterbubble.com

Your filter bubble is a unique, personal universe of information created just for you by an array of personalizing filters. It’s invisible and it’s becoming more and more difficult to escape.

“We are turning media into a mirror that reflects our own prejudices back at us. Even worse, services like Google and Facebook distort the mirror so that it exaggerates our grosser characteristics. Without our knowing, they reshape our information worlds according to their interpretation of our interests.”

Eli PariserThe Filter Bubble

digital literacy

Be Selective & Critical – in your search and your reading

• Select the LATEST / CURRENT information

• Select by RELIABILITY (e.g. source, bias, bibliography)

• Evaluate the AUTHORITY of the author/website

• check the URL• check “About Me”• check the links to/from

• If in doubt, check the Wayback Machine: www.archive.org

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