Transcript The Library and the Internet: Complementary Research Tools Research Methods & Data College of Advancing Studies Brendan Rapple.

The Library and the Internet: Complementary
Research Tools
Research Methods & Data
College of Advancing Studies
Brendan Rapple
Library Resources versus Internet Resources
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“Library resources” and “internet resources” -- really a false
dichotomy.
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A great proportion of library resources are available on the web.
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The parameters of a “library” and “library or information research”
are increasingly blurred.
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Millions of scholarly web sites have nothing to do with libraries.
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We should remember that most serious research necessitates
utilization of a library’s databases as well as resources on the web.
The Library and the Web . . .
• A vast amount of material potentially valuable for research is freely
available on the web.
• Confining one’s research material to what libraries purchase is certainly
poor research practice.
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Not Easy to Use the Library
• Today’s library is very challenging due to
– the digital revolution
– the information explosion
– the resultant embarrassment of choice,
– the myriad ways to access information.
• Many libraries point to hundreds of databases.
• Much database searching is not particularly intuitive.
• Few databases are as inviting as Google, Amazon, or Netflix.
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Usage of Google
• People like it: it’s powerful and often effective.
• Seems easy (perhaps deceptively easy) to use.
• Still, a common problem is a sole reliance on Google.
• Consequent neglect of a library’s resources and databases.
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Chronicle of Higher Education (Copyright)
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Is Google Used Efficiently and Effectively?
• How often is Google’s advanced searching
capability utilized?
• How many click on Google’s MORE
provides more focused searching by
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http://www.google.com/advanced_search
http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/
Catalogs
Directory
Images
Maps
Finance
News
Patents and a host of other options.
link which
Google Scholar
• Though not as focused as many “library” databases, Google Scholar has
great size, breadth and cross-disciplinary depth.
• Types of scholarly material Google Scholar points to include
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Peer-reviewed articles
Theses
Books
Abstracts and papers from professional societies, preprint repositories,
universities and other scholarly organizations.
• Searching preferences may be set to a library’s holdings so that relevant
hits will be linked to results.
• Consult Advanced Scholar Search Tips http://scholar.google.com/scholar/refinesearch.html
to increase search accuracy.
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Google Book Search
http://books.google.com/
• An initiative to digitize books from a growing number of major libraries
(presently 25 in the US, UK, Spain and Germany).
• Potential number of books to be digitized is vast.
• Almost all of the U. of Michigan’s over 7,000,000 volumes will be copied.
• Only digitized books in public domain will be accessible full-text online.
• Still, hundreds of thousands of books are already freely available full-text.
• This potent research tool should be known and utilized by all researchers.
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© 1996 Ed Stein
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Google: Not the Only Search Engine
• Scores and scores of others, including:
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Ask.com http://www.ask.com/
Scirus http://scirus.com/
Yippy http://yippy.com/
Bing http://www.bing.com/
Exalead http://www.exalead.com/search
and of course Yahoo! http://www.yahoo.com/
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Important to Remember that
– Different search engines search different parts of the web
– They do it in different ways
– There are also widely divergent methods of ranking results.
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Capabilities of Different Search Engines
• Some are good at
– finding still and moving images (e.g. Yahoo!Video for video)
– visual searches (e.g. Search-Cube)
– finding blogs (e.g. Technorati for blogs)
– retrieving podcasts (e.g. Podcast Search Engines)
– retrieving sounds (e.g. Findsounds) and so on.
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More Search Engines
• Healia.com -- searches medical info.
• Regator.com -- searches blogs
• Picsearch --Finds pictures/images
• Answers.com – Question and answer
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Useful Overviews Of Search Engines
Choose the Best Search for Your Information Need
http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/information/5locate/adviceengine.html
The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, April 2007
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_100_alt_search_engines_april07.php
Which Search Engine When?
http://www.philb.com/whichengine.htm
Tool Kit for the Expert Web Searcher
http://wikis.ala.org/lita/index.php/Tool_Kit_for_the_Expert_Web_Searcher
Search Engine Resources
http://www.refdesk.com/newsrch.html
Wikipedia List of Search Engines
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines
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Selective Web Guides
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Categorized/annotated guides to web sites generally selected by educators.
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Sites carefully evaluated for accuracy and high quality content.
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Examples:
• INFOMINE http://infomine.ucr.edu/
• Intute http://www.intute.ac.uk/
• BUBL LINK http://bubl.ac.uk/
• Scirus http://www.scirus.com/
• IPL2
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http://www.ipl.org/
Conclusion
• Scholarly research generally requires strong familiarity with
– print and electronic resources purchased by Library
– vast amount of quality information and data available for free on the
internet.
• To limit oneself to one type of resource is not good research
practice.
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