Transcript Material in Electronic and Web Environments

Information literacy
you are the expert!
Maureen Henninger
[email protected]
The 7 faces of information literacy
1. Using information technology for information retrieval
and communication
2. Finding information located in information sources
3. Executing information processes
4. Controlling information
5. Building up a personal knowledge base in a new area
of interest
6. Working with knowledge and personal perspectives
adopted in such a way that novel insights are gained
7. Using information wisely for the benefit of others
SLAV, Information literacy 2005 ©Maureen Henninger
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Conference themes

The effectiveness of collaborative partnerships


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Collaborative learning & teaching teams
ICT supported learning
Designing interactive digital learning products
Communication skills
Is this the
8th Face of information literacy?
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Your comfort zone under attack
team work
expectations
Version
989.3.9.7
multi-skills
requirement
uncertainty
constantly
changing
technologies
crossfunctional
projects
YOUR
COMFORT
ZONE
complexities of
information
environment
new
technologies
interdisciplinary
work
SLAV, Information literacy 2005 ©Maureen Henninger
Web?
Database?
Subscription?
RSS
blogs
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team work
expectations
multi-skills
requirement
uncertainty
constantly
changing
technologies
crossfunctional
projects
YOUR
COMFORT
ZONE
interdisciplinary
work
SLAV, Information literacy 2005 ©Maureen Henninger
complexities of
information
environment
new
technologies
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An information ecology
‘An information ecology is a system of people,
practices, values, and technologies in a
particular environment’
(Nardi and O’Day, 1999)
keystone
species
Translators
Facilitators
Teachers
Mediators
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teacher-librarians
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Communicating our expertise

Quality ‘stuff’




Finding
Sifting
Filtering
Disseminating
Peter Steiner (1993). The New Yorker, 69 (20) p. 61
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Cyber somewhere

The Web

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

Approximately 6-8 billion documents
Collected into directories
Indexed by search engines
The invisible Web



Approximately 550 billion documents
Stored in databases
NOT indexed by Web search engines
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What are the tools?
Two general categories
Search engines
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General
Specialised (by subject)
Directories
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General (catalogues of resources)
Specialised (subject gateways)
Directories of directories, databases
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Directories vs search engines


Catalogue of resources
created by humans
Most popular are
commercial, eg. Galaxy,


Open Directory


Use for broad subject
treatment
Often indiscriminate in
quality
SLAV, Information literacy 2005 ©Maureen Henninger

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Database of keywords
created by computer robots
Huge databases — Google
points to 8+ billion
documents
Use for unique documents,
highly specific information
No quality control
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Search engines

Only two major general ones




Killed off April 2004
Minor ones, e.g.


Google and Yahoo
End of 2003 AltaVista and AlltheWeb purchased
by Yahoo
HotBot , MSN and Teoma
Specialised ones, eg.

RocketInfo, GoogleNews (news), AskJeeeves for
Kids, SportQuest, Topica (discussion groups)
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Trusted, value-added resources

Evaluated resources

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


Similar to an academic library
Selection criteria for inclusion
e.g. BUBL, Infomine
Resources with added metadata for detailed
searching, e.g. author, ERIC subjects
Subject gateway




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Specialised collection
Selected by subject experts
Evaluated & annotated resources
Similar to an art library
e.g. Artifact
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What are you looking for?
Searching for specific information or
documents
 Looking for general information
 ‘Just browsing’
 ‘I need a fact’
 Monitoring

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Searching for a specific document
 Tools

publisher’s site; a search engine
 Examples

A homepage
 Use Google to find Artifact, which is part of the Resource
Discovery Network in the U.K. – use I'm Feeling Lucky!

The Australian report “Rural Teacher Education"
 Use Yahoo
 "rural teacher education" AND inurl:au
 Limit the search to pdf format
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Traditional vs search engine searching

Traditional database searching

Relied on ‘exact match’ strategies

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
Boolean operators
Proximity operators
Content in specific fields
New algorithms being developed by search
engines


Fuzzy logic, clustering, vector analysis
Google’s ‘page ranking’ based on citation searching
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Best results with search engines


‘Conceptualise’ your search
Use whatever advanced searching techniques are
available (more on this later)




Boolean operators (but be prepared for them not to be
accurate)
Proximity operators (phrase searching only)
Field searching, e.g. in the title, in the site, url
Why use advanced searching techniques


To get more precise/relevant results
Techniques are used in database searching
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Search example
I need information on Australian or Chinese government
policy for reducing global warming
1
st
s e t o f c o n c e p ts
2
nd
s e t o f c o n c e p ts
3
rd
s e t o f c o n c e p ts
A u s tra lia n p o lic y
A u s tra lia
A u s tra lia n g o ve rn m e n t
C h in e s e p o lic y
C h in a
C h in e s e g o v e rn m e n t
re d u cin g
g o v e rn m e n t p o lic y
p o lic y
g lo b a l w a rm in g
re d u c in g
re d u c in g
g lo b a l w a rm in g
g lo b a l w a rm in g
Searching with each set of concepts would return different documents
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Searching with Yahoo
g lo b a l w a rm in g a u stra lia ch in a p o licy
1 1 5 ,0 0 0
"g lo b a l w a rm ing " a u stra lia ch in a p o licy
1 0 2 ,0 0 0
"g lo b a l w a rm ing " A N D (au stra lia O R ch in a O R ch in e se ) A N D
(p o licy O R p o licie s)
n o t a ccura te resu lts
4 8 0 ,0 0 0
in title :"g lo b a l w a rm in g " intitle :a u stra lia O R in t itle :ch in a p o licy
n o t a ccura te resu lts
4 1 4 ,0 0 0
4 5 0 ,0 0 0
in title :"g lo b a l w a rm in g " intitle :a u stra lia p o licy
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Best technique with Yahoo

Use the basic search for simple Boolean
statements
intitle:“rural teacher education” site:au
intitle:"search engines" intitle:research site:edu

Use the advanced search for


Restricting file format
Mixing operators
WARNING!
I am still trying to figure out what Yahoo does!
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Searching with Google
g lo b a l w a rm in g a ustra lia c hin a po lic y
2 2 8 ,0 0 0
"g lo b a l w a rm in g " au s tra lia c h ina p o lic y
1 5 7 ,0 0 0
"g lo b a l w a rm in g " au s tra lia O R c h in a O R C h in e s e
p o lic y O R p o lic ies
8 6 4 ,0 0 0
"g lo b a l w a rm in g " ~ p o lic y ~ a u stra lia O R ~ c h in a
a llin title :"g lo ba l w a rm in g " ~ p o lic y ~ a u stra lia O R
~ c h in a
in title :"g lo b a l w a rm in g " in title:~ p o lic y
in title :~ a ustra lia O R in title:~ c hin a
in title :"g lo b a l w a rm in g " ~ A u stra lia O R ~ C h in a
-in u rl:c o m
SLAV, Information literacy 2005 ©Maureen Henninger
1 ,1 0 0,0 0 0
4
648
1 0 ,7 0 0
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Current search syntax
S e a rc h
e n g in e
S im p le
s e a rc h
Ad vanced
s e a rc h
B o o le a n
N e s tin g
P ro x im ity
T ru n c a tio n
F ie ld
s e a rc h
G o o g le
Yes
Yes
OR
A N D is
a u to m a tic
No
" "
No
in title :
a llin title :
in u rl:
lin k:
s ite :
file typ e :
M a yb e ? ?
OR
A N D is
a u to m a tic
NOT
No
Yahoo
Yes
Yes
SLAV, Information literacy 2005 ©Maureen Henninger
~ fo r p lu ra ls
& s yn o n ym s
" "
No
in title :
in u rl:
s ite :
u rl:
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Specialised search engines
AskEric (education)
 AskJeeves for Kids
 Bartleby (reference books)
 Biographical Dictionary
 OneKey (“Google for kids”)
 PeachPod

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Example
Use OneKey to find Web information on
Australian rainforest frogs
allintitle:~frog ~australia rainforest
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Browsing, general information
 Tools

Directories, subject gateways
 Examples
 General directory
Use Open Directory to find information on dinosaurs

Directory of evaluated resources
Use BUBL to find Web resources on dinosaurs
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Specialised education gateways
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AwesomeLibrary
EDNA
Educator’s Reference Desk
European Schoolnet
GEM
MarcoPolo
SOSIG: Education
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Selected directories of gateways

Australian Subject Gateways
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BUBL Link
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BIOME

PINAKES

WWW Virtual Library
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Examples
1.
2.
Use MarcoPolo to find algebra lesson plans for
6-8 grades students
Use the WWW Virtual Library to find an
information literacy subject gateway
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Monitoring - keeping up
News search engines eg. RocketInfo
 Journal scans eg. Ingenta
 Subject gateways



Education monitoring services


often have the “latest news”
Australia.edu
Blogs and RSS
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Blogs & RSS



Disseminate information quickly
Help prevent information overload
Blogs
‘web page containing brief, chronologically arranged
items of information’
 Information Literacy Weblog
 Library Weblogs

RSS (Real Simple Syndication)


A distribution tool
Feeds tool
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The ‘deep’ or ‘invisible’ Web

‘Surface’ Web

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
static Web documents - html format
‘Deep’ or ‘invisible’ Web
Digital material search engines do not or can not index
 database-driven html documents




ephemeral content eg. current news
grey literature eg. technical & government reports
non-html formats eg. pdf files
database content
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Examples of educational databases



AskERIC
CHID (Combined Health Information Database)
Education-line (electronic texts in education &
training)


Home Economics Database
World Data on Education (UNESCO)
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Problem
Suppose you want authoritative information
about Australian natural resources

Search for “natural resources database”
Australia on Google

Results — list of 2,080

Which is the ‘best’ one?

If you knew of ANRO

Use Google’s I’m feeling lucky
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Discovery & access
A two step process
1.
2.
Finding a database which may have the
required information
Formulating, issuing and refining a search
query in the database
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Directories of searchable databases

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
Academic Info
BUBL
Collection of Special Search Engines
Direct Search
Infomine
Internet Public Library
Invisible Web (Intelliseek)
DADI (Les bases de données gratuites sur Internet)
Librarians' Index to the Internet
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Example

Authoritative information on amphibians

Use AcademicInfo to find an appropriate
database
(amphibia OR frog) AND database
OR
use the index Sciences > Environmental
Studies > Biodiversity > Databases
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What the search engines are doing

Contracting to index database content

Yahoo includes

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
Library of Congress, UCLA Cuneiform digital library,
OAIster (Open Archives Initiative) project, National
Science Digital Library
Integrates content with visible web results
Google includes


OCLC’s WorldCat, IEEE Abstracts, PubMed General,
various publishers
Separate service, Scholar
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Scholar
Seems to emphasise science &
technology
 No definition of “scholarly”
 Provides citation indexing, ie. who has
cited the item
 Many results are ‘citations’


You may not be able to read the document
if you don’t have a subscription
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Scholar’s interface

Basic search




intitle:
allintitle:
author:
Advanced search



As above, plus
Publication
Date ranging
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Articles about information literacy and school
libraries by Tood, Moore or Bruce written since
1998
intitle:"information literacy" "school libraries"
author:todd OR author:bruce OR author:moore
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Keystone species

Maintain and build our literacy



Move out of your comfort zone
Monitor trends, explore, experiment, dare,
play seriously
Communicate our expertise
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