WISER Social Sciences: Finding Quality Information on the Internet

Angela Carritt and Penny SchenkBodleian Law Library

Two different approaches:

Search engines advantages

• broad reach, everything on the web that has been indexed or “crawled”

• Lets you to pinpoint an exact phrase or concept

disadvantages

• brings back too much information, if searches are not limited

• sources may not be authoritative

Web directories and gateways advantages

• quality control

• Makes browsing in a topic area easier

disadvantages

• does not encompass everything, you might miss good material

• may not be current

• focus/emphasis may not be what you want

Search engines

Google Blog Search Google Scholar Clusty Metacrawler

The Google family

Scholar Preferences• Library links – allows Google to

link to full text within Oxford subscriptions

• Bibliographic manager – allows you to set defaults for exporting to Endnote, RefWorks etc

Advanced Scholar Search gives you more control over your search terms

Link to abstract or full text

Find other versions in the group e.g. related pre-print, article, conference paper

Number of times this item (or related items in the same group) has been cited

Oxford Full Text : checks Oxford databases for full text version

Full text also available through DOI (Digital Object Identifier)

Click here to view article online

Download citation to Endnote, RefWorks or Reference Manager

Print holdings

Choose more >> from Google home page See what bloggers are saying on a topic Advanced options allow you to choose specific

authors, dates, sites etc.

Google Blog Search

advanced optionssearch by words contained in posts

restrict by words in the blog title

can restrict by blogger

can restrict by language

restrict by date range

results

alerts based on blog search

several options for receiving ongoing updates when search terms are matched in blogs – email alert, gadget on Google homepage, subscription in a feed reader

Clusty

Sorts results into related “clusters” Useful for zeroing in on what you were looking for

and ignoring irrelevant results Can group results by cluster, source or domain

clusters on left

results sorted by sub-topic

preview sites with magnifying glass icon

results sorted by source

results sorted by domain

Metacrawler – use multiple search engines at the same time

Top results should be quite targeted since multiple engines returned them

Evaluating web resources

How reliable is the web page you are looking at?…how much does it matter? Don’t get caught out.

Who wrote it? (person / organisation)

Do they belong to an organisation?Look at the URL of the web page

•Do they belong to an organisation you trust?

•University (.ac.uk, .edu)•Government (.gov)

•Pressure group (biased? Reputable/Alarmist?)

• BBC?

How up to date is it?•Last updated statement•Last event mentioned?

•Last article cited?

How knowledgeable are they? (check their facts against what you know)

Could it be a hoax?Check

Who’s linking to it?Are key web sites web sites?

Is it on Intute / other portals that you trust?

Is it mentioned in key research guides?

Why did they write it?

Who are they? (If its really important do a search

on their name)•Library catalogue

•Indexing and abstracting service•Google

Web directories and gateways

A different approach

Selected resources Fewer results Better results….depends who selected them!

Directories created by subject experts = assurance of high quality / reliable resources

May not include all the relevant resources Organised – resources are usually listed by subject /

genre etc = can Browse or Search Can often limit your search to particular document types

(e.g. full text journal articles, conference papers, primary materials, blogs…)

Examples

Intute – Gateway created by the UK academic community

InfoMine – Gateway created by a consortium of Universities based around University of California

OpenDOAR – Gateway of papers held in UK repositories DMOZ – Gateway of resources selected by the web

community Finding specialist gateways for your subject

http://www.intute.ac.uk From the UK academic community High quality resources selected by

academics, subject specialists, librarians

Browse options

Search across the whole of Intute / broad subjects

Allows you to limit your search to particular document types e.g. articles, primary sources, research guides and directories

Browsing Intute

Each Intute page has a search box allowing you to search within a subject

Browsing Intute

Each Intute page has a search box. This allows you to search within a subject

Link to the resource

Link to the full description – includes keywords

Add to marked list (for saving, printing etc)

Using Filter by….

Filter allows you to limit your search to particular document types (e.g. journal articles, conference papers, research guides)

Searching Intute What are you searching? - the descriptions on

Intute (not the web sites Intute lists) Want to search the web sites? - Once you

have run a normal “Intute search” you will have the opportunity to see results from the “harvester”. The harvester scans all of the web sites listed on Intute for your keywords. It will give you more results but they are likely to be less relevant.

Search results on Intute

Your results – Records where your keywords are included in the Intute description (does not include results from the harvester).

Click here to see results returned by the harvester

Advanced Search

•Allows you to search across subjects•Allows you to limit your search to particular document types - Use “Resource Guides and Directories” to find specialist gateways

My Intute

•Receive e-mail alerts for new resources in your chosen subject area•Save records on Intute•Save searches

http://infomine.ucr.edu/ Resources collected by consortium of US

libraries US bias Expert resources / Resources gathered

by “robot” Includes free and subscription resources

– Oxford has subscriptions to many of the “pay for” resources

Infomine

Searches across Infomine

Advanced search allows you to search across several topics and to limit your search by field

Browse options

Get RSS feed when new resources are added

Read the Infomine blog

• Expert created - resources selected by subject expertExpert + Robot also includes resources gathered automatically (less quality control)

•Free / Fee based. Many of the fee based (subscription resources) are available to Oxford users via Oxlip

Limit your search to particular fields. Note “full text” field looks at the text of home and top level pages only

Choose Broad subjects

Document types

Infomine - Searching

InfoMine results screen

Opportunity to include/exclude robot selected sites and/or fee based resources

Longer description including keywords / subject headings.

Mortar board – shows resources selected by an “expert”

More info…

Library of Congress Subject Headings / Keywords - click to see all resources using the same keyword

Browsing InfoMine

Browse options•Subject – Library of Congress Subject Headings•Keywords To find resources by subject check both subject and keywords

Browsing InfoMine

Choose the correct part of the alphabet

http://www.opendoar.org/ Directory of academic institutional repositories What is an “academic institutional repository?”

Collection of documents created by members of a University

Usually pre-publications drafts, working papers, conference papers, theses..

OpenDOAR allows you to search for papers held in academic repositories around the World It will only find scholarly papers Good assurance of quality

OpenDOAR

Search for papers and other documents

Searching OpenDOAR

Searches the full text of all papers

Results…

http://www.dmoz.org/ Web directory created by web users

To contribute content users must be able to demonstrate subject knowledge

Dmoz homepage

Browsing DMOZ

Browsing Dmoz

Browsing Dmoz

Apply to be an editor – contribute content etc

Searching Dmoz

Results

“Categories” (subject) from which results are drawn. These may influence your browsing later on.

Each resource includes a link and a brief description.

digg - “collaborative editing”

Finding specialist directories for your subject Intute allows you to filter your results by

document type - “Research guides and directories” includes web directories / gateways (Make your search – open the filter drop down menu – choose “Research guides and directories”)

Ask your subject librarian! Web resources section of relevant research

guides If you find a directory via a search engine – don’t

forget to evaluate it!

Citing electronic resources…some general tips and examples

Make sure you give enough information for the reader to find the resource

Giving the URL is not enough…the web page may have moved or been deleted

Consult the citation guide for your faculty or department … this will lay out specific rules … and tell you how to format your citations

General

Citing online equivalents of print publications

If the online version is exactly the same as the print version (including pagination) cite the print version

e.g. Scanned version of print journal

When citing a web page, include Author (personal or corporate) Year published / last updated (if

available) Document or page title (if available) Title of the “complete work” (name of the

website or type of document) URL Date you accessed it

BBC 2007 Musharraf vows polls in February (BBC News) Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7084839.stm [Accessed 8 November 2007]

Wikipedia, last updated 8 Nov 2007 Pervez Musharraf (Wikipedia) Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pervez_Musharraf [Accessed 9 Nov 2007]

Musharraf, P 2005 President's address at international seminar on global terrorism (Presidential Speeches on President of Pakistan web site). Available at http://www.presidentofpakistan.gov.pk/FilesSpeeches/Policy/8302005111013PMPresidents%20address[1].pdf [Accessed 9 November 2007]

How do you cite a quotation if there are no page or paragraph numbers?

According to APA Cite the heading and the number of the

paragraph following it to direct the reader to the location of the material

e.g. Beutler, 2000, Conclusion section, para. 1

HarvardBBC 2007 Musharraf vows polls in February (BBC News) [online] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7084839.stm [Accessed 8 November 2007]OscolaBBC ’Mushaffaf vows polls in February’ (BBC News) 8 November 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7084839.stm accessed 8 November 2007

Summary

Use a variety of approaches, there are many options in addition to “googling it”

Be aware of the quality of the source

Cite electronic sources carefully

URLs: Search engines

Google Blog Search @ http://www.google.co.uk/blogsearch/

Google Scholar @ http://www.google.co.uk/schhp/

Clusty @ http://clusty.com/ Metacrawler @ http://www.metacrawler.com

/

URLs: Web directories and gateways Intute @ http://infomine.ucr.edu/ Infomine @ http://infomine.ucr.edu/ openDOAR @ http://

www.opendoar.org/ DMOZ @ http://www.dmoz.org/