Directions: Search for two articles relevant to your topic and describe your experience of searching.
- How did you cast your broad net? Why did you choose that method? Was it helpful?
- What databases did you search first? Why? What route did you take through the databases?
- Once you got into the databases, was it difficult or easy to find what you were looking for? What made the process difficult or easy?
- What do you think might help you in the future when searching databases?
You do not have to list your experience. State your experience in a way that is natural to you (though you will want to keep an academic tone).
Due before class on Monday, Feb. 10th.
When first deciding on a topic I did a google search to first see what was out there. I found articles that brought the subject I was interested in writing into new light and which brought new questions to mind. After our first lesson with working with the library’s database I used that to find articles that would substantiate my topic. The process could be a bit tedious at times, especially when bombarded with articles close to my subject, but on a different tangent. It’s just a new way of finding information so I caught on quickly. I’m still unsure of what would make the process easier. I’ve put in many hours of researching in the past. Hopefully that would help in doing research for this paper.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I started with the Google search engine to find some articles and just a general place of topics to start out. I chose it because Google pulls information from all over no matter what topic you are researching. It was actually fairly helpful just because it was a broad net and it gave me other websites and ideas to dig into. I used the EPSCO database from our library because I had used it the previous semester. It was a little overwhelming; it seemed like I needed to simplify everything and be incredibly specific with what I was searching for. I liked the database overall, but I found doing that simplification and specifying a little tiring. I believe for future searches it would be beneficial for me to make a list of key words that are related to my topic and search from there.
ReplyDeleteI used Wikipedia and Google for Broad Net searches. I also used the EBSCO database on the PPCC library site. You have to know what path you want to narrow your results down to something useful but this was the first time that EBSCO produced exactly what I wanted without multiple searches and horrible results. I am sure the fact that I narrowed my search words down and knew exactly what I was looking for, made my results so much more useful.
ReplyDeleteExperience, then share
ReplyDeleteWhen I started my research for my paper the first thing I did was cast a broad net using Wikipedia, I chose to use Wikipedia because I’m more familiar with Wikipedia, using Wikipedia was helpful, I found some facts and quotes that might be useful when I write my paper.
I used Google Scholar for as a database search, I chose Google Scholar because of my experience using Google; I have found Google to be a useful search engine in the past. I narrowed my search down by finding related material and used the provided URL links to navigate through the site. Once I got into the database it was fairly simple to navigate, I just had to find what articles were most relevant to my thesis. I personally think practice is what I mostly need in order to be more effective using databases, just getting more familiar with the different databases is what I personally need to do.
I used Wikipedia and Student pulse to cast my broadnet and they were very helpful. I choose this method based off of the advice that was given to me in class and it turns out that both of these sources for my broadnet had some very interesting articles for my subject. I used Wikipedia first and then switched over to Student pulse because it had more specific articles that had more to do with the USA. I found that alot of the articles i looked at featured minority representation in canda, so I hope to get more in depth with the united states and minority representation. I think that by going over how to use the databases and by getting some advice on which ones would be useful for my topic was very helpful and made I much easier than I thought it would be.
ReplyDeleteI started out by searching Ebsco and looking through my copy of the Inquiry book. Ebsco provided a number of good results as I narrowed my topic and though about what I wanted to write. Inquiry proved fruitful with a couple of articles found in its pages. With these in hand I also checked out the library for any books that might be relevant and found a couple that I have placed a hold on. After that I searched Wikipedia using the names of the two people Professor Taylor had given me. Found that Caathy Davidson had recently published an article regarding my topic with a link to a free PDF version. While I have not had a chance to read it, as it is over 200 pages long, looking through the sources has provided me with a number of other articles to check out if this one fails.
ReplyDeleteReally Ebsco was the easiest search I tried. Attempts at getting Google Scholar and other sources to work seemed difficult. Probably the biggest problem I had was narrowing down my search results. Going forward I think it will just take some practice and experience refining my searches to find exactly what I desire.
When I started searching for information, I started in wikipedia.. I was unable to find anything useful so I just did a big search through Google. It was useful to cast a broader net because there was not much information for my topic. Maybe next time I search for information I'll narrow results by its year becauseall the information I found was too old.
ReplyDelete