Transcript - Sundara Ram MattA Jan 12th, 2014

Day 2
- Sundara Ram Matta
[email protected]
Jan 14th, 2014
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FINDING INFORMATION
• As you continue in your courses and eventual careers,
you’ll find that you frequently will have to find
information.
• With the resources available through the Internet, it is
easier than ever before to find large amounts of
information.
 This is a double-edged sword: it’s also easy to get buried under too
much data.
 It’s important to understand that just because the data is available
doesn’t mean it is correct.
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SEARCH ENGINES:
PLANNING YOUR SEARCHES
• To help find data quickly, plan your searches.
• Be specific and use multiple keywords.
 If you are searching for German shepherds in West Virginia, you will get
better results using the terms German shepherd and West Virginia
than if you just searched using the term dogs.
 Try searching for different terms and synonyms. If car doesn’t work, try
searching for automobile.
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SEARCH ENGINES:
FINE-TUNING YOUR SEARCH TERMS
• Use phrases and quotation marks
 “Springfield, Illinois” will return pages that reference only Springfield, Illinois
with the words in that specific order.
• Negative terms
 Virus –computer will find pages that mention the word virus but not the word
computer.
• AND and OR queries
 Most search engines automatically insert the word AND between phrases
(which is why quotation marks are useful) so there is no need to type it in the
search engine. OR is useful for searching for more than one term, such as
West Virginia University OR WVU.
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SEARCH ENGINES:
KEEPING YOUR SEARCH USEFUL
•
•
•
•
Google ignores common terms such as where and how, as well as
single digits and letters.
It is not case sensitive. Typing aNoThEr pHrAse will return the same
results as another phrase.
To search for Roman numerals or a common word, either use
quotations or the + sign. “Star Wars I” and Star Wars +I will return
about the same results.
Use the site command
 football site:wvu.edu will return pages that reference football, but only on
WVU servers.
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SEARCH ENGINES:
GETTING ADDITIONAL HELP
• Try using Google’s help features.
 The search engine’s help page can be found at
http://google.com/help/basics.html and from there, more advanced
search tips are available.
• Most other search engines
work similarly to Google.
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HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES WORK…?
http://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/thestory/
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WIKIPEDIA
• Wikipedia is a free user-edited online encyclopedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org
• Advantages
– Huge volume of information, often on subjects not well-covered
elsewhere
• Disadvantages
– Can be edited by anyone
– Information can be misleading, biased, or just plain wrong.
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WIKIPEDIA:
EVALUATING ARTICLES
• What’s the tone of the article?
– Any tone other than a professional one increases the likelihood that
the article is misleading or biased.
• When was it last edited?
– More recently edited articles are generally more frequently used and
more likely to be correct.
• Citations and references
– More citations and references means the article is more likely to be
accurate.
• Like any source, there is no guarantee the information is
100% accurate.
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WIKIPEDIA:
HOW SHOULD I USE IT?
• You generally shouldn’t use Wikipedia as a sole source
for your writing!
• Initial and general information
– Wikipedia is great for giving you general background on a
subject.
• References (at the bottom of the article)
– Sources for getting more information.
– Also help to verify the information in the Wikipedia article.
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GOOGLE SCHOLAR
• Where do I find Google Scholar?
– http://scholar.google.com
• What sources is it looking at?
– Includes peer-reviewed papers, thesis, books, abstracts, and other
scholarly literature from academic publishers and professional
societies, and also from scholarly articles available on the Internet.
• If you’re doing technical research or writing papers for your
major, Google Scholar is a good place to look for existing
work.
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GOOGLE SCHOLAR:
HOW AND WHY SHOULD I USE IT?
• What do I use it for?
– Good for finding papers, abstracts, and citations
– A great way to search for diverse sources from one place
– Provides full-text sources on the web, as well as locates the complete
paper in your library
• What advantages does it offer?
– For each piece that it locates, Google scholar shows the title, other papers
that have cited the article, related articles, and library links for electronic
and physical papers
– Allows you to search by title, author, and category, as well as within
specific publications
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GOOGLE SCHOLAR & WVU
• You can use Google Scholar to search WVU databases.
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GOOGLE SCHOLAR @ WVU
• Configure Scholar Preferences
• Add West Virginia University under Library Links.
• Google Scholar will search WVU whenever you perform a
search via Scholar and alert you when materials are
available from the WVU Library.
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SOME THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
• When researching topics on the web, some things to consider are:
– Who is the page’s author? Is the source credible? Sites like www.cnn.com
will have more accurate information than sites like www.theonion.com.
– How current is the information? Sites that have not been updated since
1998 are less likely to have accurate information.
– Search engines are unfiltered and thus return all results. These may
include results that aren’t objective or even accurate. Think about the
possible biases that could be portrayed and whether the information and
data is authentic.
– You can double-check your information against multiple sources if you are
unsure of their authenticity.
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FINALLY… WHEN SOMETHING GOES
WRONG
• Try Google Groups.
– http://groups.google.com
• Google Groups allows you to search “Usenet News Groups” –
discussion groups that predate the web.
• Rather than writing a web page to describe a problem, people
will often post technical problems to this Usenet groups.
• Some vendors monitor the groups (such as Microsoft) and will
assist by posting recommended solutions for problems.
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CRITICAL THINKING
• All Homework Assignments and Tests will have a
section called Critical Thinking or Analysis Questions.
• Typically 5 questions (you pick your favorite 4)
pertaining to the assignment or common knowledge
questions.
• Simple ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ are not good answers, a few
moments searching on the web can get you a more
accurate answer.
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