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RESEARCH STRATEGIES - WILLIAM BADKE, COPYRIGHT 2008   

Note that chapter order in the print edition will differ from the above.  The online version will retain the former chapter divisions.

The World Wide Web in the 1990s created the same kind of revolution, but on a larger scale. An information delivery system primarily concerned with paper and print (libraries, bookstores, hard copy journal subscriptions and so on) became an electronic universe available to anyone with a computer and a service provider. Today, the average student gets well over two-thirds of his/her information from the Net.

Stumped? Let me supply some possibilities.

The Internet is a world where:

Maybe your response should be “all of the above.” The Internet is wonderful and frustrating, helpful and potentially dangerous, beneficial and a waste of time.  Why bother with it then? Because it has become the common denominator of our daily lives.

What do I mean? All of us know that most transactions today are becoming digital—we use bank machines and online banking, we use computer library catalogs, we find the Net to be a venue for social interaction, and many of us are shopping from home over the electronic highway. As the phenomenon of doing things electronically grows, the only common medium that can meet its needs is the Internet. The Net has become the basis, the common denominator, for the things we need to get done. It is the number one vehicle for all informational research, whether through a search engine or a specialized subscription database.

True, there are now calls to start over with this thing, using what we have learned to create a new World Wide Web that works more efficiently. But no one is advocating that we abandon the whole idea. Thus we’d better try to understand it.

A Brief Introduction to the Net

The Internet has been around for a quite awhile, but most people weren’t aware of it until the early 90s. Back in the late 1960s, the US military developed a worldwide computer network in order to remain in communication with everybody involved in the space program and defense research. This network (really a network of networks) eventually came into the hands of non-military people—scientists, computer buffs, and so on. It lacked a common communication language that was easy to use, so only specialists could profit from it. In the 1990s, a common communication language and a common communication protocol were established so that anyone who had access to this network could move around it with ease. This resulted in the formation of the World Wide Web.

The following sites on the Internet will provide you with good informationabout using it for research purposes:

This one, called Learn the Net, is very informative and user friendly. It also has a lot of links to other information about the Net.

This is a tutorial with links from the University of California, Berkeley.

Disclaimer: In the pages that follow, several Internet URLs will be given. Addresses change rapidly on the Net, so I make no guarantee that you will find what you’re seeking by inputting the URLs given.
 

Home Page—the first screen you come to when you open your browser. It is also the front door or first room in any Internet site.

World Wide Web—often described as WWW. It is an organizational system for sites on Internet, allowing a user with a search engine to find information from many databases using a common language (HTML) and a common method of communication (HTTP).

HTML—the common language of the World Wide Web. It stands for HyperText Markup Language. This is the language in which data in the World Wide Web is written.

HTTP—HyperText Transfer Protocol, a formatting method to determine content and means of transfer of information on the Net. If we were to use the phone system as an analogy, http would be like the method that phone companies worldwide have agreed upon to make sure a phone in Nigeria can communicate with a phone in England. Http is the protocol that is used within the World Wide Web to allow communication among Web sites. Most Internet URLs begin with “http.”

Document—on the Net, a document is any collection of information that you locate in your search (home page plus related pages on one Internet site).

Link—a feature of the World Wide Web that allows you to move from one document to another by way of a hyperlink or just plain “link.” A link in a document is a word or phrase with colored letters, sometimes underlined. With it, you can move from document to document without typing in a lot of addresses.

Bookmark—your browser has a bookmark or “favorites” function that allows you to record the addresses of sites on the Internet that you want to return to. When you want to return, you can click your mouse on that bookmark, and you will be taken to that site without needing to type an address. You can use http://del.icio.us/ to organize and share bookmarks, if that is your desire.

Google Scholar and other Free Academic Search Engines on the Net [more print edition]

While it is true that many databases provide full text, most of them require a subscription by an institution as well as password protection. As far as genuinely free journal articles are concerned, there are still limitations on the titles and scope of journals available.[more in print edition]

Google Scholar is not really a subset of the Google search engine, but a resource devoted to scholarly literature—books, journal articles, conference proceedings and academic Web sites found on the WWW. [more in print edition]
 

Microsoft Academic Search (http://academic.research.microsoft.com/)

Following upon the failure of Windows Live Academic, Microsoft has a new academic search tool.  Its database is still smaller than Google’s but it does have a few unique features. For more information on features, see  http://academic.research.microsoft.com/About/Help.htm.

CiteSeer is a search engine for academic scientific information that is freely

available on the WWW. [more in print edition]

This site bills itself as “the most comprehensive science-specific search engine on the Internet.”

Academic users of this search engine submit their own material or citations to it and have the ability (if properly signed in) to revise anything in the database. Think of it as the Wikipedia of academic search engines.

Search Engines for the Rest of Humanity—Google and Friends

In the most common Internet research situation, you want information on a topic, but you don’t have a specific address. This is where a search engine can help you by taking the keyword(s) you input and searching the WWW for data that is relevant.

[more in print edition]
 

Searching by Subject Tree

All information exists within hierarchies. For example, cell phones are a subclass of telephones which are a subclass of electronic communication devices, which are a subclass of all communication devices. Information hierarchies form a tree-like structure. There are certain sites on the Internet where you can search down various hierarchies or subject trees from more general categories to specific ones.

For example, Google, while majoring on keyword searches, also has a Directory (http://www.google.com/dirhp) that leads you to a list of categories like Art, Business, News, Science, and so on. Click on any one, and you can follow a hierarchy down to more specific information.

Portals [more in print edition]

Portals are organized by subject.

But how do you locate such sites in the first place? Here’s where a more general portal can help. A general portal is usually much larger, and often serves, at least in part, as a doorway to more specific subject portals. For example:

Evaluating Information from the Internet

What does that mean for you, the anxious Internet searcher? It means several things:

• A lot of what you hoped might be on the Net is not there or you haveto pay for it—the full texts of most journal articles, the full texts of recent books, a vast array of reference tools, etc.

• Most keyword searches through search engines also bring you a ton of less than wonderful Web sites that you have to weed through to find a few gems.

• It’s difficult to evaluate the quality of the material you find on the Net.

Let’s consider this latter point a bit more closely. In normal publishing, there are gatekeepers to make sure that material that is inferior doesn’t get published (at least we hope there are gatekeepers). On the Internet, anybody who wants to say anything has the chance to say it. Unless it is criminally obscene, violently racist or a clear and present danger to society, no one challenges it. Thus people can tell lies on the Net, and they probably won’t suffer any nasty consequences (at least not in this life).  

So what happens when you download a document that has no author clearly named but seems to be reliable information about B.F. Skinner’s behaviorism? How do you determine whether it’s good or bad information? Here are some clues:

Ultimately, you will have to evaluate the information itself. Does it makesense? Does it ring true? Is there sufficient backing for viewpoints presented?

Have you or your professor ever heard of the people involved? Remember that Internet data may lack all the proper signposts of good scholarly work and yet still be valuable. On the other hand, it may have footnotes and a bibliography but be a racist rant. For proper evaluation, the buck stops with you actually reading the material and making sense of it.

Some Internet Addresses Valuable for Research Purposes

In presenting the following addresses, I must warn you again that addresses, like phone numbers, go out of date fairly quickly. On the Net, something you found today might not be there tomorrow. So, some of these addresses may not work. If you have a problem, try searching for the title of the source, using a search engine.

Refdesk, an amazingly detailed site that bills itself as “The single best source for facts” (http://www.refdesk.com/)

Libdex: http://www.libdex.com/

. (For this one, it’s best to click on the “Country” link).

Library of Congress searchable catalog: http://catalog.loc.gov/

Canada 411 (Canadian phone numbers & addresses): http://www.canada411.ca/