Introduction to Finding Information

Kirsten Hostetler

Introduction to Finding Information by Kirsten Hostetler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

1

Introduction

This open textbook serves as the course material for Central Oregon Community College’s 1-credit library course, LIB100: Introduction to Finding Information. If you’re a LIB100 student, you’ll be reading this book according to the following schedule:

Start Here Module | Start Here Part: Course Information
Module 1 | Part 1: Start Your Research Process
Module 2 | Part 2: Search Strategies
Module 3 | Part 3: Valuing Sources
Module 4 | Part 4: Using the Barber Library

If you’d like to download a copy of this book or a specific part to read offline, see the Additional Book Formats section.

I

Start Here Part: Course Information

Welcome to research! Whether you consider yourself an experienced researcher or a beginner or somewhere in between, LIB100 is intended to help you become more efficient and effective at finding, evaluating, and responsibly using web-based and other information resources.

This textbook has all the content you will need for the course. In Start Here Part: Course Information, you will read four chapters that will introduce you to the course learning objectives, get you thinking about your own approach to research, and outline important course policies to help you succeed.

Start Here Part: Course Information Outline

Start Here Part has four chapters:

LIB100 Learning Outcomes

Reflecting On Your Research Approach

LIB100 Policies

Course Information Summary

It should take approximately 15 minutes to complete Start Here Part.

Use the arrows at the bottom of each page to move forward and backward through the modules. Or, use the Contents menu in the top left hand corner to go to a particular section.

1

LIB 100 Learning Outcomes

What did you hope to achieve by enrolling in LIB100? It’s OK if your response is “to fill a program requirement” or “because I needed 1 credit,” but you might have been prompted because you’ve been frustrated with research before, or because LIB100 sounded like a good way to become a more efficient searcher. You might have enrolled after an experience being overwhelmed with too much information during a research assignment, or you might even have recognized the increasingly complex nature of online research that presents new ethical dilemmas with every tool and platform you encounter.

Regardless of what brought you to class, you can expect to feel more comfortable with the following learning outcomes by the end of our five weeks together.

Course Learning Outcomes

Identify key services and resources within Barber Library’s physical and online environment.

Demonstrate proficiency in selecting a research tool appropriate to the type of information needed.

Demonstrate proficiency in using research tools.

Demonstrate proficiency in evaluating and responsibly using information.

Those outcomes are great for LIB100, but sometimes it can be difficult to translate outcomes to our real lives. Luckily, my job as your instructor is to translate course material to make it relevant to your real life! So what do these learning outcomes mean to you? Well, by the end of LIB100, you will become more familiar with the tools, resources, and services available to you as COCC students through the Barber Library. But you will also become more efficient and strategic as researchers using all types of sources from all types of tools. You’ll do this by better recognizing your own information needs, understanding how certain sources align to those needs better than others, and uncovering the context behind information creation. This should help you find better sources more quickly when you need information for your other classes, your job, and just generally in your life. Sound good? Then let’s get started!

2

Reflecting On Your Research Approach

A Note on Reflection

This course is heavy on reflection. Every module, I’ll be asking you to reflect on your learning during the previous week, and you’ll also be reflecting on your search processes in your research log as part of  the research scenario project (more on that later). Additionally, at the start of every textbook reading, you’ll be given a series of statements from the Information Literacy Reflection Tool that asks you to notice and appreciate your current approaches to gathering and using information.

It’s not an accident that you’re going to be reflecting so much! When students describe their learning, how it changed, and how it is relevant to future experiences through reflection opportunities, it’s been shown to help information stick past the immediate lesson and apply what was learned to situations beyond the classroom examples. Reflection has even been shown to improve performance! So let’s get reflecting!

Information Literacy Reflection Tool

This tool was created by a group of Oregon librarians to help students think about their information processes. Read through each statement, noting your 1-6 ranking and then calculate your total in the question below.

Text version of the questions.

Activity

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=64#h5p-3

3

LIB100 Policies

Review the following course policies. This will help you get comfortable with the course structure so that you can spend the rest of the class time focusing on course content!

Due Dates

Assignments for this course are due every Thursday at midnight, with the exception of the final research scenario project due on the last day of class.

Assignments & Grades

Your final grade in this class will be based on the following assignments:

Introduction discussion | 10 points

Module reflections | 10 points each

Research scenario project | 65 points total

There are 115 total points possible in this class, with extra credit opportunities during the class worth as many as 10 points, making it possible to earn more than 115 points. A detailed description of the research scenario project is available in Canvas.

Late Policy

My late policy is motivated by three goals: encourage time management, promote personal responsibility, and keep things fair. Because this class operates on an accelerated timeline, I’m asking you to do a decent amount of work, and I know the one-credit course can easily drop to the bottom of your priority list. However, I’m working hard to ensure this is a valuable experience for everyone, and I expect you do to the same. When the unexpected happens—you get a cold, the network goes down, a personal situation escalates—all you need to do is contact me no later than 24 hours after the due date.

It is up to you to take advantage of this policy, it requires emailing me as soon as you know you won’t meet the deadline. If you do not contact me 24 hours after the original due date, you will not be able to earn full points for that assignment. You do not need to tell me why you’re using the late policy (unless you’d like me to know) but your email should include a new deadline.

To make sure you’re staying on top of things, please check the “View Grades” section on Canvas regularly to review your grades and receive my feedback. I will provide constructive comments within 72 hours of assignment due dates. If I am unable to meet this deadline, I will make a class announcement.

Class Etiquette

In this class, you’re going to be asked to share your work with other students. This isn’t easy! To make this sometimes-scary concept a bit more comfortable, it is important to remember to approach your peers (and your instructor) with kindness and respect. Assume best intentions for everyone, but own the consequences of your words. Inappropriate commentary or behavior will not be tolerated.

Instructor FeedbaCk

I grade all assignments at least 72 hours following the due date. If there will be any exceptions, or a time when you should expect delays, I will make sure you are all notified.

You will be asked to reflect a lot in this course! I respond to any questions you pose in your reflections in the Canvas gradebook.

Your research scenario project is worth the most points in this class. You have various check-in points before you turn in your final project and research journal submissions  on the last day of LIB100.  The final submissions will be graded on accuracy, applying LIB100 material, and meeting the assignment requirements.

While I only grade the check-in activities on completion, I will be giving you detailed feedback that you can incorporate into your final project and research journal submissions. Make sure you’re reading my feedback and making changes so that you can earn the best grade possible, particularly in your research journal! The journal may be optional from week-to-week, but you are required to respond to all prompts by the end of the class and submit with your final research project.

Activity

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=66#h5p-4

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Course Information Summary

Yay! You’ve completed Start Here Part: Course Information as part of the Start Here Module! In addition to the reading for this week, you need to post your response to the introduction prompt in Canvas by midnight this Thursday as part of your mandatory attendance participation.

Start Here Part: Course Information Key Takeaways

As a result of completing this introduction module, you should be able to

Describe what you’ll learn in LIB100.

Explain the importance of reflection.

Feel comfortable describing one reflective statement about your approach to research and inquiry that resonates with you.

Define major course policies that will help you succeed in this class.

II

Part 1: Start Your Research Process

Questions to Consider

As you read Part 1, consider the following:

How would you define the information need for your research project scenario?

Do you need to do any background reading to prepare for your research project scenario?

What type of sources do you use every day?

How do you discover those sources?

Part 1: Start Your Research Process Outline

The following eleven chapters are in Part 1:

Reflecting On Your Understanding of Information Creation

Defining an Information Need

Developing a Research Topic

Background Reading

Information Sources

“Scholarly” Sources

Different Sources for Different Needs

Search Tools

Different Search Tools for Different Sources

Start Your Research Process Summary

It should take approximately 75 minutes to complete Part 1.

Use the arrows at the bottom of each page to move forward and backward through the modules. Or, use the Contents menu in the top left hand corner to go to a particular section.

5

Reflecting On Your Understanding of Information Creation

Information Literacy Reflection Tool

This tool was created by a group of Oregon librarians to help students think about their information processes. Read through each statement, noting your 1-6 ranking and then calculate your total in the question below.

Text version of the questions.

Activity

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=151#h5p-5

6

Defining an Information Need

You’re in class and the teacher asks where the mitochondrial matrix is located. You’re at work and your boss wants to know if a new software update has any known glitches. You’re in a bar and a friend is arguing with you about the actual height of Tom Cruise. You might not have been in any of these exact situations, but you might recognize the feeling: there is a gap in your knowledge that requires new information to reduce uncertainty and improve your understanding. This is an information need.

Once you recognize you have an information need, you can start planning your approach for how to address this knowledge gap. You can think about what type of information you might need to fill the gap. For example, you’d need a structural diagram of mitochondria to answer your teacher, consumer reviews and technical specifications of the software update to respond to your boss, and a measurement to win the bet with your friend. Once you think about the type of information you’re looking for, you expand your plan to include where you would start searching to find that information, who you’d expect to create the information that addressed your need,  and how much information you actually need before you feel like your gap has been sufficiently closed.

Think of your information need like a map. When coming up with your information need you need to define your destination as well as the path you’re going to take. Your destination is the end point that helps you determine that all your questions have been answered and your knowledge gap is successfully closed. Your path helps you stay on track to your destination, making your search efficient because you know what sources you’re looking for to address your knowledge gap and you know what search tools to use based on where you might expect to find those sources.

Let’s look at some examples:

The questions I need to address are: Where are libraries headed? What does the future look like for the library industry? To answer these questions, I first need industry research on current employment prospects, which I would expect to find in government sources. I also need percentages about how libraries are expected to grow, which I would expect to find in specialized search tools like IBISWorld and Business Source Premier.

The gap in my knowledge is how to improve my classroom management skills in a preschool environment when students struggle with sharing toys. Because I’m a professional in the field, I need professional information, so I will look for scholarly articles that
research behavioral interventions and strategies for dealing with shared toys in a similar environment to my preschool classroom. To find these articles, it will be necessary to search in specialized education search tools.

With a family member recently diagnosed with asthma, I have a gap in my knowledge about treatment options, emergency care, and long-term symptom maintenance. Since this will impact my understanding of medical care, I want to make sure I have the best information possible, relying on the types of sources medical professionals might use like scholarly medical research found in peer-reviewed journals or summarized in comprehensive medical encyclopedias respected by doctors. These sources are primarily found in costly, specialized search tools.

I have a need to create an annotated bibliography for a class that requires at least one peer-reviewed source for a total of four sources found in at least two search tools. The subject I’ll use to create the bibliography is how library usage impacts student success in college. To find the four sources, I’ll rely on peer-reviewed research for all four since I’ll require experimental evidence establishing a relationship between libraries and graduating from college. I will need to use specialized search tools focused on the subject of education.

And with that, you’ve started your research process, all kicked off with just a little information need! The simple act of defining the information need helps you reflect on what you’re looking for so that you can build a strategic approach to your research, be more efficient in your searching, and feel confident in the information you find.

Keep in mind that your information needs might change as you start researching. You might run into unexpected detours like the sources you chose aren’t providing the information to address your knowledge gap. Or you might take some back roads and decide to change your destination based on new information you found. That’s OK! Each journey is different. The important thing to remember is, if you get lost, make sure you stop and ask for directions—like asking for help from your instructor or a librarian!

7

Developing a Research Topic

Information Need to Research Topic

You, most likely, have a broad range of interests outside being a student. Families, jobs, hobbies, financial investments, medical decisions—all of these areas are rife with information needs that might require research. However, despite having inspiration all around us, some of the most terrifying words a student can hear from an instructor are: “Pick a topic. It can be anything.”

The first thing to do when picking a topic for an assignment is to take a deep breath and know that you’ve got this! Once you’re ready to concentrate, the second thing to do is to examine the assignment carefully for guidelines. Even the most wide open research assignment should have some parameters that help you narrow your information need. For instance, did the instructor place any restrictions on your topic like identifying things that you can’t write about? Are there requirements around the type of information sources you need to use and how you should incorporate these sources into your work? These guidelines start the process of narrowing.

Text version of the image.

You start from the outside in, beginning most broadly with all possible topics and slowly narrowing until you reach the Goldilocks topic: not too narrow, not too broad, but just right.

Narrowing Your Topic

When working on narrowing your topic, you should take inspiration from your own interests. What are things you care about? Are you intrigued by an issue that’s been covered in the news recently? Are you able to connect your research to your potential career, current job, or degree/program at COCC? If you’re still struggling selecting or narrowing a topic, you could  scan your course textbook for ideas, browse some magazines or newspapers for current events, dive into Wikipedia  or another encyclopedia and see what sparks your interest, or talk to your instructor or a librarian for ideas and guidance.

Library Resources for Selecting & Narrowing Topics

Library resources can also play a roll in this stage of your process. The Current Events & Controversial Issues guide links to a variety of tools to help you browse “topic” pages, such as CQ Researcher, Opposing Viewpoints, and America’s News. These resources give general background information on a topic to help you get started as well as provide links to more specific information, something that’s super helpful when you’re looking to narrow your topic. Click through the following images to see where these tools are linked on the Current Events & Controversial Issues guide and what the topic pages look like.

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
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Goldilocks Topic

All this narrowing to avoid a topic that’s too broad means sometimes we overcorrect and get a topic that’s too narrow. Be careful about getting highly specific with your topic because you might find it difficult to locate sources that affect a really narrow audience or that haven’t been studied in-depth before.

For example,  say you’re writing about college tuition. That’s a pretty broad topic and you want to narrow it down by  exploring the impact of rising tuition on COCC students. That narrow a focus, though, would limit the sources that cover your topic so you might only find information in the student newspaper, the Broadside, or the local city paper, the Bulletin. If your assignment requires you include at least two scholarly sources, you’ve already reached a roadblock. Instead of limiting by location, which might not even be relevant to your search, you could look at large-scale studies across the United States focusing on the impact of rising tuition on all college students.

The bottom line is, you will be working toward a balanced research question that is specific enough to guide you in your research, but not too restrictive.

Activity

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=131#h5p-1

Sections of this chapter were adapted from the following:

Doing Research by Celia Brinkerhoff, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Introduction to College Research by Walter D. Butler, Aloha Sargent, and Kelsey Smith, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

8

Background Reading

Presearch

It’s useful to think about this early stage of your process as one of exploration. Your topic and your information need will more than likely evolve as you determine if something is searchable, find sources that deepen your understanding, and start writing.

Whether a topic is completely new to you or you’re already somewhat familiar with it, doing a bit of research before you actually dig into the real research—what I call presearch—is a great idea. Background information helps you understand the context of your topic and how it relates to a larger picture. This exploratory process will also help you think of any specialized terms associated with your topic that you will use for searching (we’ll talk more about the importance of keywords in a later chapter). And, sometimes, this initial exploration will lead you to realize you aren’t discovering any relevant sources on your topic so you might need to make some modifications. That’s ok. A little work up front will save you time later.

Google as Your Presearch Tool

Many people start their research these days with a preliminary Google search, which usually leads them to Wikipedia. Why? Wikipedia and reference sources in general (e.g., encyclopedias, atlases, handbooks) are excellent sources of background information. Though Wikipedia is not considered a scholarly or academic source, it can be a place for preresearch, allowing you to gather general information on your area of interest, and giving you ideas for narrow areas of focus. The “content” box on the left-hand side of Wikipedia pages can help you quickly scan for potentially relevant and interesting subtopics.

We’ll talk about the multiple purposes of Wikipedia in a later chapter, but it’s important to note that many instructors will not accept Wikipedia as a source for the research assignment you ultimately turn in, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use it during the early stages of research when you are seeking background information.

Library Resources as your presearch tool

Beyond Wikipedia there are other reference sources that are considered more scholarly by instructors and, occasionally, can be cited in your final research assignment. The library provides access to reference tools that would also be helpful for presearch, such as Credo Reference and Gale eBooks. These search tools allow you to search across hundreds of full-text encyclopedias and dictionaries with one search. Unlike Wikipedia, sources found in these tools clearly show the authors and publishers responsible for producing the content, and often the creators are experts in the subject matter. We’ll talk more about searching these tools in a later chapter, but you can find tools to search for reference sources as a way to conduct presearch on the Resources by Type  Reference Sources page. Click through the images below to see how to find the Reference Sources page on the Barber Library website.

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=134#h5p-7

Activity

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=134#h5p-8

Sections of this chapter were adapted from the following:

Doing Research by Celia Brinkerhoff, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Introduction to College Research by Walter D. Butler, Aloha Sargent, and Kelsey Smith, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

9

Information Sources

Do source Types Matter?

Have you ever received a research assignment and one of the requirements your instructor made was to find a variety of sources: books, magazines, newspapers, journal articles, and media resources? Did you ever wonder having that variety makes a difference to your research?

Sources are created in different contexts, for different audiences, for different purposes, and with different standards of quality. Requiring a variety of sources doesn’t just mean you’re going to have to search in a variety of different tools, it means you’re going to get a variety of perspectives, from a variety of authors, and it’ll get you to interact with the content in a variety of ways (like watching, listening, or reading).

When you’re being strategic about your research process, you’ll want to plan out the type of sources you need appropriate to your topic and the requirements of your assignment. It’s like creating a map to help you navigate the wild outback of overwhelming information. Why wander around lost, when you can plan a direct route? Taking that extra minute to understand how information is created and delivered through a variety of formats will help you in selecting the best sources to meet your information needs.

Source Types

There’s no such thing as a good source or a bad source, just sources appropriate and inappropriate to your information need. The process of information creation is complex and results in a variety of formats and delivery modes, each having a different value in a given context. And there are so many source types out there, it can be overwhelming. The following is not inclusive, but a  short list of the most common source types you might encounter during your research process. Click on the arrows below to learn more about each source type.

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
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Information Timeline

The process of information creation follows a timeline. As soon as an event occurs, social media and online news sources are the first to provide coverage. Magazines and newspapers will follow shortly after, and journal articles and books take even longer to get published.

Knowing this will be important in your research: if you choose a very recent event to write about, you will likely not find information about it in a book or scholarly article. You may, however, need to expand your topic to look for a similar or related event, or broader treatment of the subject, to find sources that you can still use to support your writing.

Sections of this chapter were adapted from the following:

Doing Research by Celia Brinkerhoff, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Introduction to College Research by Walter D. Butler, Aloha Sargent, and Kelsey Smith, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

10

"Scholarly" Sources

Requiring scholarly sources

In your classes at COCC, chances are good you’ll come across an assignment (if you haven’t already) that requires you to find and use scholarly sources. But what does that mean and why are instructors so insistent on these sources?

Scholarly sources are typically articles (though they could also be certain kinds of books) that are written by experts for other experts in the field. These experts are usually in conversation with each other: formulating and debating complex ideas, balancing competing perspectives, and frequently citing each other to build on previous work and advance the field. If you’ve ever read a scholarly article and felt like it was written in a language you don’t speak or that you’re interrupting a conversation that started without you, this is why!

So why the fuss about using these types of sources? Well, typically, when instructors say “scholarly” they mean peer reviewed or refereed. This is a rigorous review process that certifies someone who knows what they’re talking about has double-checked the work. It’s not a fact-checking process, but it ensures the author is following the best scientific practices of the field, contributing to the ongoing scholarly conversation, and meeting certain standards of quality before the work is published.

Peer-reviewed work isn’t perfect—there are flaws in any system! But peer-review is a standard in most academic fields, which means once an article has been through the peer review process, the rest of the field must deal with that work somehow. This can be done by incorporating that work into the established understanding of that discipline,  building on it further, arguing with it to explain why it might be wrong, or trying to recreate results through replication studies.

Identifying Peer Review in the wild

So, if we know what peer review is and we know why we’d want to use it, how do we know if something goes through the peer review process? Well, just like with most things in college, they don’t make it easy on you! Unfortunately, there’s no label that brands peer reviewed articles, so adding peer review to your keywords is not a 100% accurate strategy.

Additionally, not all articles in an academic journal are subject to peer review. There may be other content such as letters, opinion pieces, and book reviews that have been edited, but not necessarily gone through a formal peer review process.

There are certain characteristics to look for when you want to know if something is peer reviewed. Click on the plus signs on the image below to learn more about what to look for on the article itself.

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
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Using Library Resources to find scholarly sources

Did I mention this process was rigorous? It can take a long time from when the author conducts the research and writes the article to when peer reviewers critique it to when the article is ultimately published. The entire process can last a few years! Many times, publishers like to designate this work as exclusive by making access to journals and the articles within very costly. You might discover the perfect article, and then discover a $75 price tag to just rent the article for 24 hours.

Library resources are paid for by your tuition dollars. We provide access to these scholarly sources, so please don’t pay twice to access research! No matter where you find an article, if you’re asked to pay for it, contact the library instead. We’ll either be able to locate the article in our collections, or request it from another library.

The other benefit to using library resources for scholarly research, is we make it a little easier to identify those peer-reviewed journals. When searching our tools, look for the filters that say Scholarly or Peer-reviewed. Applying these filters ensure your results will only come from peer-reviewed publications.

Activity

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=143#h5p-11

Sections of this chapter were adapted from the following:

Doing Research by Celia Brinkerhoff, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

11

Different Sources for Different Needs

We’ve gone through the trouble of discussing the different types of sources you might encounter while researching, but why does that matter to you? What will identifying sources do for you when it comes down to the practical side of getting our hands dirty and researching?

Well, as we’ve discussed in previous chapters, the sources that address your information needs vary as much as the needs themselves! No source will be able to address every information need you have, and so, being the strategic researchers we are, knowing what sources are out there can help us plan ahead  so you can make a few shortcuts during the research process. Do you know your information need can only be addressed by a source that was produced yesterday? Then you can skip ahead to searching for newspaper articles because we know those are published daily. Do you know your information need can only be addressed by primary research conducted by experts? Then skip ahead to scholarly sources like peer reviewed articles.

Recognizing our information need helps us think about the sources that can fill that knowledge gap, and makes us more efficient when we start our search.

Activity

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=141#h5p-2

12

Search Tools

So far we’ve talked about all the different source types out there, but that’s just one element of planning your research process. How you discover those sources is a whole different story!

When I ask people what their go-to source is, a good majority respond with: “Google!” However, Google is not actually the source you’ll use to learn more about your topic, Google is the tool you’ll search to find sources like Wikipedia, online newspapers, websites, and  much, much more. The search tool you use to find sources plays just as much a role in your research process as your sources do.

Beyond Google, you are probably familiar with other search tools, like Siri or Alexa, Netflix, or Google Scholar. You might be less familiar with all the search tools on the library website, known as databases.

Most library databases provide access to resources that you would normally subscribe to or pay for, such as a newspaper or academic journals. You can access some articles for free online, but websites often limit the amount of articles you can view freely. For example, if you visit the New York Times online you can read 20 articles for free every month. After that point, you will need to purchase a subscription to read more. But the COCC library subscribes to the New York Times for you so you don’t have to pay for your own access.

Another advantage of using a library database is that the resources are secured and safe to access. Some websites require you to accept additional considerations and agreements  before accessing materials. But what are you agreeing to? Websites, by their nature, are dynamic resources; their content can change without warning. A resource in a database typically will not change and will often come with a permanent link (sometimes called a “permalink”) so that you can find and share the resource in the future.

Library databases also come with additional tools to support your research. These tools can include help with writing citations, easy-to-use filters to limit your search results, and options to save the article for later use. We’ll talk more about how to search library databases in the next part of this textbook, but remember that whenever you use a library database, look for these additional features that will streamline and support your research process.

Some examples of library databases include Academic Search Premier and also some that we’ve mentioned before like CQ Researcher, Opposing Viewpoints, and America’s News.

Sections of this chapter were adapted from the following:

Introduction to College Research by Walter D. Butler, Aloha Sargent, and Kelsey Smith, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

13

Different Search Tools for Different Sources

In the previous chapter, I made the claim that the search tool you use to find sources plays just as much a role in your research process as your sources do. Why do you think that is?

If I search in a search tool like Netflix, am I going to find scholarly articles? That’s an easy answer: NO! Netflix is a collection of streaming movies and TV shows, so when I search that tool I can only find what’s available in the collection. The same goes for any other search tool I use in my research process, my results are limited by the collection of sources available in the tool. That means the search tool I select is directly related to the types of sources I’m going to find.

You might think, well that’s easy, I’ll just search Google then because Google has everything! Of course, it’s not that easy! For one, Google does not actually search everything that exists online. When you search Google, you’re searching approximately 35 trillion sites across the Internet worldwide. While 35 trillion is such a large number it’s hard to even fathom, that actually represents only an estimated 4 percent of the information that exists on the Internet, meaning you’re barely scratching the surface of what’s out there.

The other issue with Google is search results contain all kinds of different source types. In one search, you’ll get websites, news articles, pictures, maps, videos, government sites, and much, much more. We’ve already talked about being strategic in our research by creating a plan of what sources we want to address our information need. Why search a tool that gives you everything when you can search a more specialized tool that gives you only the source types you need.

When I want to read newspaper articles, I’ll go to a search tool that only searches newspapers. When I want a scholarly article, I’ll go to a search tool that only searches scholarly journals. And, when I’m being particularly fancy about my research, when I want a scholarly article focused on libraries, I’ll go to a search tool that only searches scholarly library journals. This gives me highly specialized results relevant to my information need. I don’t get the billions of results I would in Google, but that’s great because that means I have less to sort through, and I’m more efficient at researching!

Just like we want to look for different source types based on our information need, we want to search different search tools based on our source type need. This is all part of our research plan as we become strategic researchers. We’ll talk more about how to select search tools based on the source types we’re looking for to address our information need in the next part of this textbook.

Activity

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Start Your Research Process Summary

Congrats! You’ve completed Part 1: Start Your Research Process for Module 1 of LIB100. In addition to the reading for this week, you need to select your research scenario by responding to the prompt on the appropriate discussion thread and complete your Module 1 reflection by midnight this Thursday.

Part 1: Start Your Research Process Key Takeaways

As a result of completing Module 1, you should be able to

Define an information need.

Select the “just right” research topic.

Identify characteristics of major source types.

Explain what instructors mean when they require “scholarly” sources.

Discuss how an information need impacts the source types you’re looking for, and how that impacts the search tool you select for research.

III

Part 2: Search Strategies

Questions to Consider

As you read Part 2, consider the following:

How might you go about brainstorming quality keywords for your research scenario project?

How do you interact with algorithms every day, whether you realized it or not?

What is helpful about searching for sources in library databases?

What is difficult about searching for sources in library databases?

Part 2: Search Strategies Outline

The following ten chapters are in Part 2:

Reflecting On Your Strategic Process

Start With Your Keywords

Avoiding Your Own Bias

Age of Algorithms

Library Search Tools

Barber Library Website Overview

Selecting a Library Search Tool

Putting It All Together

Selecting Non-Library Search Tools

Search Strategies Summary

It should take approximately 60 minutes to complete Part 2.

Use the arrows at the bottom of each page to move forward and backward through the modules. Or, use the Contents menu in the top left hand corner to go to a particular section.

15

Reflecting On Your Strategic Process

Information Literacy Reflection Tool

This tool was created by a group of Oregon librarians to help students think about their information processes. Read through each statement, noting your 1-6 ranking and then calculate your total in the question below.

Text version of the questions.

Activity

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
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Start With Your Keywords

Identifying the Main Concepts

We’ve done a lot of prep work so far, and we have just a bit more to do before we actually start searching for resources in a few more chapters. The last thing we need to add to our search plan is keywords, or the words we search that represent the main concepts of our research topic.

Though many people type full questions word-for-word into search tools, some of the words in your research topic are irrelevant when it comes to finding information sources. Including irrelevant words in your keywords can really mess with your results, you might not get a comprehensive view of what sources are out there or you could have too many irrelevant sources clouding your result list.

So how do you identify those main concepts? Well for starters let’s eliminate some easy words that will never be part of the main concept: the, of, a, to, is, affect, pro, con, impact, what, why, when, how, and are. All those words can go.

Next, look for nouns in your topic that would be essential if you were describing your topic to someone else. I call this part Hulkspeak, because you want to think of the most basic ways of referring to your topic with no frills or unnecessary words.

Let’s look at an example of how we eliminate unnecessary words then highlight the main concepts:

Research topic: How can divorce affect a student’s GPA in high school?

How can divorce affect a student’s GPA in high school?

Eliminating the unnecessary words first left us with only main concepts, that was easy! If you search divorce, student, GPA, and high school and all your results have all those words, you’ll find some really relevant sources.

Evolution of Keywords

Like most things with research, you should get comfortable with change. The main concepts you identify at the beginning of your research process will evolve as you search. You’ll take a look at your results and, if they aren’t good enough, you’ll need to edit your keywords and search again—often multiple times. Most of the time, the first keywords we try are not the best, even though our search tool gives us results. It pays to search further for the sources that will help you the most. Be picky.

My advice to you is to start your keywords as broad as possible, review your results, and then start making adjustments. It can be helpful as you search to start listing any alternative or related keywords or phrases that you might want to incorporate into your search. You could return to your presearch to see what terms and phrases were used. You could also try using a thesaurus to find synonyms. Some databases will also list “related terms,” which can be helpful for modifying your search. The better you know your topic, the better your keywords will be, so be prepared to do multiple searches before finding the “right” keywords.

Combining Keywords

OK, so now you’ve found the main concepts and listed several keywords to describe these concepts (e.g., synonyms, narrower terms, broader terms), it’s time to combine those keywords in meaningful ways in order to perform a search. Strategically combining terms will help you get more precise results than you otherwise would typing in a whole research question or just a few words into a search bar. Search statements are almost like a set of instructions given to whatever search tool you’re using.

We combine our keywords to create a search statement using AND, OR, NOT—always typed in all capital letters in order for the search tool to recognize them as combining words rather than a part of your keywords.

AND

AND is used between all the keywords and phrases that you want to include in your search. When creating a search statement to find information on the effects of divorce on high school students’ GPA, AND goes between all the keywords:

divorce AND grade point average AND high school

The instructions you’re giving to the search tool is to return results that contain all three of these keywords.

OR

OR is used to search for alternative keywords. Remember, there are many words that one could use to describe the same concept and OR gives you the option to search for multiple, synonymous terms at once. Instead of searching for various alternative keywords in different searches, OR allows you to search for multiple alternative keywords in the same search.

grade point average OR academic achievement

NOT

NOT excludes certain keywords from your search. This isn’t as commonly used as AND and OR, but NOT can be very helpful if you are getting many irrelevant results. NOT is best used when using keywords that have associations with multiple things. For instance, if you were trying to search for information on the animal Jaguar and kept getting too many results about the car brand Jaguar, you could use NOT to exclude the word “car” from your search.

Be aware that using NOT can exclude relevant results, as well. If an article or website that had some great information on the animal Jaguar, but just so happened to mention the word “car” in the text somewhere, it would be excluded from your results.

Activity

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=159#h5p-15

Sections of this chapter were adapted from the following:

Introduction to College Research by Walter D. Butler, Aloha Sargent, and Kelsey Smith, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

17

Avoiding Your Own Bias

Confirmation bias

What is confirmation bias? Here is a quick definition: “The tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with one’s existing beliefs.” Although confirmation bias is typically unintentional, it is strong and widespread, with many significant effects and real-world implications.

The impact Confirmation Bias has on your keywords

Experiments have found repeatedly that people search for evidence consistent with their current beliefs and, rather than searching through all the relevant evidence, they phrase questions to receive an answer they already agree with.

One of the primary types of confirmation bias is the biased search for information. When searching Google or any search tool, you will want to be careful that your choice of keywords does not unintentionally reflect a bias towards preexisting beliefs, or towards a particular preconceived answer.

Let’s look at an example. A search for “is rent control unfair to landlords” is likely to get results that describe rent control as unfair to landlords. A better search might be something like “rent control landlords”

This chapter was adapted from the following:

Introduction to College Research by Walter D. Butler, Aloha Sargent, and Kelsey Smith, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

18

Age of Algorithms

Algorithms, what are they?

Algorithms are step-by-step instructions that computers follow to complete tasks, solve problems, and make automated decisions. They use data to make predictions about people, including their preferences, attributes, and behaviors. Algorithms power nearly everything we see online, including search engines, social media, video games, online dating, and smartphone apps. They are used to shape and filter content on the platforms many of us interact with daily, such as Google, YouTube, Instagram, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and Spotify. For example, algorithms determine which websites you see first in your Google search results, which posts you see on Facebook, and which videos YouTube “recommends” and autoplays for you.

The Influence of Algorithms

There is no doubt that algorithms can be useful and help to improve our lives. For example, it certainly saves a lot of time and frustration to be able to pull up a map on our phones and instantly determine the fastest way to reach our destination. And it’s definitely convenient when—using my previous searches, time of day of my search, the browser I’m using, the IP address of my device, etc. etc.—I Google “pizza” and out of all the possible results I could find, the algorithm knows I’m in Bend and I previously ordered from Pizza Mondo, so that’s my top result.

However, as technology and social media scholar danah boyd has noted, “the same technology can be used to empower people…or harm them. It all depends on who is using the information to what ends.”

Text version of the graphic.

What happens when algorithms are used to predict when college students are “cheating” on a test, or to predict who should be hired for a job or who should get a loan, or to decide the type of information we see in our social media newsfeeds, or to calculate credit scores, or even to predict criminal behavior and determine prison sentences? Are Google search results really an unbiased presentation of the best available information on a research question? How do algorithms impact our perception of a research topic, or of our own realities? If I want to learn something new about a controversial topic, the algorithm will present me with top results for people in my area, or favoring websites that I’ve already clicked on, or making assumptions about the topic based off a lot of information including my keywords. So instead of learning something new, I’m stuck in a bit of an information bubble.

Because we often assume that algorithms are neutral and objective, they can inaccurately project greater authority than human expertise. Thus, the pervasiveness of algorithms—and their incredible potential to influence our society, politics, institutions, and behavior—has been a source of growing concern.

Algorithmic bias is one of those key concerns. This occurs when algorithms reflect the implicit values of the humans involved in their creation or use, systematically “replicating or even amplifying human biases, particularly those affecting protected groups.” In search engines, for example, algorithmic bias can create search results that reflect racist, sexist, or other social biases, despite the presumed neutrality of the data. Here are just a few examples of algorithmic bias:

An algorithm used by judges to predict whether defendants should be imprisoned or released on bail, was found to be biased against African-Americans.

Amazon had to discontinue using a recruiting algorithm after discovering gender bias: The algorithm was penalizing any resume that contained the word “women’s” in the text, because the data was based on resumes historically submitted to Amazon, which were predominantly from white males.

Numerous articles have examined the role that YouTube’s recommendation algorithm might play in radicalizing viewers.

How this impacts our research

At the end of this chapter, I don’t expect you to know exactly what algorithms are and how they work—this isn’t a computer science course! But I do expect you to recognize that algorithms have an impact on our search results. Creators of the search tools we’re selecting make predictions about what they think you want to see, with both good and bad results.

It is extremely important to be aware of the invisible structures that we interact with everyday and that so significantly steer what we see online. Algorithms shape the type of information we encounter, which in turn influences our opinions, behaviors, decisions, and worldviews. And while this chapter focuses on free search engines and social media, library databases are not immune to human biases either. After reading this chapter, hopefully you recognize that the search tools we select are a part of our research process, influencing our results just as much as our keywords and the sources we ultimately use.

So what can we do? Well, unfortunately, there’s not much you can do beyond being aware of this impact, and we’ll talk more about evaluating sources later in class.

I am not suggesting you abandon online search tools—that would be next to impossible these days! Instead, be aware of the information environments you inhabit to better take advantage of the benefits they offer and use them more effectively.

This chapter was adapted from the following:

Introduction to College Research by Walter D. Butler, Aloha Sargent, and Kelsey Smith, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

19

Library Search Tools

REcapping our Search Strategy

We covered a lot in Part 2 of this textbook about our research process and already covered a lot in this module in regard to our search strategy, so let’s take a second to remind ourselves how far we’ve come.

First, we find our just right (not too broad, or too narrow) research topic, often using presearch to give us some focus and a solid background in what’s out there. Second, we map our research plan, identifying our information need to clarify what source types we’re looking for and where we might find those source types. Third, we start brainstorming the main concepts, related terms, and any specialized language (drawing on our presearch) used for our topic, avoiding our own confirmation bias, to create our initial search statement, which might change as we dig deeper into our research.

Now we’re ready to start selecting our search tools, wanting to select a few so that we ensure a variety of perspectives that otherwise might be inadequate based on a search tool’s limitations and underlying algorithm.

Let’s remember, I previously stated that search tool you use to find sources plays just as much a role in your research process as your sources do, so want to take a second to think about the different search tools that are out there. There are a variety of free search tools like Google that we’ll talk about in a later chapter, but right now let’s focus on search tools available on the library website because there’s a lot!

EBSCO and Gale

You have a ton of ways to access to information on the library website. In the next chapter, I’ll show you how to navigate the library website, but first let’s learn about what resources exist.

There are a lot of search tools on the library website, and it can get overwhelming. But one thing to note is that many of the tools are provided by the same two companies: EBSCO and Gale. EBSCO and Gale provide search tools, but they aren’t search tools themselves. Here’s an comparison to clarify what I mean by this: If you asked me what I had for breakfast this morning and I responded “General Mills,” you might look at me strange. Cheerios are a cereal made by General Mills just like Academic Search Premier is a search tool made by EBSCO, and Academic OneFile is a search tool made by Gale. Why am I introducing you to the company names then? Well because all EBSCO resources have the same features even when you’re searching in different tools, and same goes with all Gale resources. That’s really handy because once you learn how to use one EBSCO or Gale search tool, you’ll know how to use them all, you’ll just find different stuff!

When using search tools by EBSCO or Gale, you will have online access to these resources: ebooks, newspaper articles, magazine articles, scholarly articles and, occasionally, streaming video and audio files.

Popular Barber LIbrary search tools

Let’s just focus on five search tools that you might use for a variety of reasons. These aren’t the top five best search tools on the library website, they’re just commonly used and will serve as a good introduction to the library resources. It’s helpful when looking at a search tool to determine the types of sources that you would expect to find. Additionally, you want to note what subject matters are covered by the included sources. Familiarize yourself with these elements of the tools in the activity below.

Activity

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Barber Library Website Overview

Let’s Start Searching!

We’re finally ready to start searching! It takes a lot of work to research, doesn’t it?

So you have your research plan mapped out, it includes your information need and keywords, you open up the library homepage (cocc.edu/library) and….where do you click to start searching? There are a lot of options!

We know selecting a search tool needs to be as strategic as the rest of our research process, so the library homepage can be a bit overwhelming! But in this chapter we’ll break down all the different places that you can find search tools on the library website. We’ll focus on four main areas, so we won’t go in to all the particulars of the library website, but enough to get you researching!

A quick note, I included the URL to go directly to the library website above, but you can get here from any COCC webpage, just click on the word Library in the header (you don’t need to click on any of the drop-down options unless you want to go deeper in the library website). The word Library in the header will also be our breadcrumb back to the homepage. You’re probably going to end up with a lot of tabs open in your Internet browser by the end of this, that’s super common (in fact I have 25 open right now as I write this!), but if you get lost down a rabbit hole, you can look for that Library breadcrumb to take you back to familiar territory.

Barber Library Search Bar

The first, and most obvious, place we can start searching is the search bar on the homepage! This search bar is a really helpful quick start when you’re not sure where to go and what source types you’re looking for, which means you haven’t fully thought through your information need yet and aren’t being very strategic in your search. However, if you are doing presearch to make sure your topic is researchable, then this is a great place to search!

Watch and consider the following video to get a guided walk-through of the search bar on the homepage.

A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=172

All Databases

Right below that search bar on the homepage, there’s a blue box that says All Databases. Clicking this link takes you to an alphabetical list of all the search tools available to you through the library. Each search tool is listed by its name followed by a short description of what you find when you use it to search. Similar to the activity in the previous chapter, these descriptions help you determine the types of sources that you would expect to find as well as the subject matters covered by the included sources.

Because there are a lot of search tools listed here, this list is not helpful if you’re not sure what search tool you want to use. Of course, you could read through every description, but one of the reasons you’re taking this class is to become more efficient at researching, and that doesn’t sound very efficient! For that reason, the All Databases page is only really helpful if you know the name of the search tool you want to use, like if you have a favorite search tool or get a search tool recommendation from your instructor or a librarian.

Click all the plus signs on the picture below to learn more about what’s on the All Databases page.

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Resources by TypeStudents box, with first link to Resources highlighted

OK, so the search bar helps when we haven’t fully defined our information need, and the All Databases link works for when we know the name of a specific search tool, but where are those specialized search tools I keep telling you about? Don’t worry, we’re getting there! To start, let’s scroll down further, past the All Databases link, to the Students Box. From there, we’ll click the Resources link.

From here, scroll down just a bit to see the Resources by Types section. We already know that different sources work best for different information needs, and so a section of the library website that shows us search tools based on the types of sources you can find in each tool sounds pretty helpful to me!

That first link—All Databases—takes us back to that alphabetical page of everything that we just talked about, so we’ll skip over that. But the rest of the options shows us search tools to find books, reference sources (Encyclopedias & Dictionaries), government information, videos, the archives of periodicals, technology, and board games.

Resources by Subject

The last way to find search tools on the library website is probably the best way when you’re wanting to do a deep dive into research and locate specialized search tools based on your  information need.

Leaving off from the Resources by Type section, we’re already on the page we need to be on to access Resources by Subject, but just to remind us: From the homepage, we clicked on Resources in the Students box.

From there, we’ll click on the first link to Resources by Subject.

On the next page, we’ll see a list of disciplines and related subjects taught at COCC. Watch and consider the following video to get a guided walk-through of the Resources by Subject page.

A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=172

Activity

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Selecting a Library Search Tool

We’re now familiar with where we find search tools on the library website, and the best bet when you’re really wanting to do some thorough research is using the guides found on the Resources by Subject page.

But once you’re on the subject guide page, how do we select a search tool when we’re faced with a few options?

We start by looking at the search tool descriptions. On the guides, those descriptions are revealed when you click on the information icon next to the search tool name.

Does your information need require scholarly sources and one search tool includes more peer-reviewed journal than the other? Then you might want to try that tool first. Does one search tool specialize in a sub-field that is irrelevant to your topic? Then you can ignore that tool.

Remember when we were discussing keywords and I told you that when it comes to research, you should get comfortable with change? Well the trick here is not searching just one search tool and throwing in the towel. You need to change it up! Even when finding relevant results, different search tools include different resources, so looking in a different tool will result in finding different sources, expanding your research and exposing you to more perspectives on your topic!

If you’re not finding anything at all, even after playing around with your keywords and related terms, then COCC might not have access to a search tool that specializes in your research topic. In that case, you might consider a multidisciplinary tool that searches across a variety of topics rather than narrowing in on a particular focus, like Academic Search Premier or even a free web tool like Google Scholar.

22

Putting It All Together

Just one more recap to make sure we’re all on the same page!

Research topic selected? Check! Information need defined? Check! Keywords and related term brainstormed through presearch? Double check! Search tool selected and located on the library website? Check and check! Let’s start searching!

Let’s put this all together with an example:

You receive an assignment from an instructor: Pick a topic; it can be anything. Gulp.

First off, don’t fret, remember, we got this! Second off, reviewing the assignment a bit closer we notice there are some restrictions on the topics we can select. Need to have one newspaper article and one scholarly article (source types defined for us!). And it needs to be related to a recent issue, narrowing our information need even further.

OK, as a COCC student, maybe higher education is a topic that appeals to you because you live it. So we have a really broad research topic that we need to narrow down. Since we need to focus on a recent issue for a topic, let’s review some higher education issues in the headlines with a little presearch using news search tools.

We remember the Current Events & Controversial Issues subject guide has some search tools that allow us to browse, so we navigate to that page and open up America’s News. We click the first link to Find a Topic, and click on the broad topic of Education. From there, we review the narrower topics, click a few links, read a few news articles to find something that really speaks to us, and focus on student loan debt forgiveness as our “just right” research focus. Thank you presearch!

From the presearch, we made notes about main concepts that we could use for keywords: college, student loan, debt forgiveness. We know we’ll need to combine these in to a search statement and, since we want all of those main concepts to appear in all of our results we use AND. Our search statement looks like this:

college AND student loan AND debt forgiveness

During our presearch, we found a news article that helped us focus our topic but that would also work well as one of our sources. The assignment required at least one news article so we’re good to go with that! That leaves us with one last information need: a scholarly article focused on student loans and debt forgiveness.

We’re pretty specialized at this point, so to select a search tool we go to Resources by Subject and look at the Education guide. We review the search tool descriptions and select Educators Reference Complete and ERIC. All that’s left is to enter our search statement in the search tool and select a source!

The best part about using library search tools is that there are a lot of ways to refine your searches without ever having to change your keywords. Watch and consider the following video demonstrating how to search in Educators Reference Complete.

A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=458

Now that we’ve done one search there and found a source, watch and consider this second video demonstrating how to search in ERIC.

A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=458

Remember, the library subscribes to a lot of different search tools, but many are provided by two companies: Gale and EBSCO. The two search tools we just searched each come from one of these companies: Educators Reference Complete from Gale and ERIC from EBSCO*. It would be too much to demonstrate a search in every search tool the library provides, but by doing a sample search in these two tools, you are now familiar with how a majority of our search tools work. Which means, you should feel comfortable filtering your results, reading articles, and using the toolbar (e.g., citations, email, and permalinks) in most of the library search tools. What you’re searching changes, but how you’re searching remains the same!

For the search tools that don’t come from Gale or EBSCO, most of these features work in a similar fashion with filtering options, reading full-text, and offering helpful toolbars, you just might have to click around a bit or look for different icons. If you ever get lost in a search tool, talk to a librarian, that’s what we’re here for!

*Quick side note: in your LIB100 assignments, you’re asked to identify your search tools by name. The name of the tool is the specific database you searched, not the company that provides the tool. So if you used ERIC, that would be your search tool. Not EBSCO. If you need help with this, reach out to me!

23

Selecting Non-Library Search Tools

Using Internet Tools

As a COCC student you have access to almost 90 million items through the library. And that’s not even taking into consideration the access to online articles through the library’s search tools. That’s a lot of information, but it’s not everything that exists.

There will be times when your topic doesn’t fit within the library’s collection. Or there will be times when you want to do your presearch or topic selection on Wikipedia. Or there will be a time when you just want to start searching and not go through all the library resources before you begin. Basically, there’ll be a time when you don’t use library resources, and that’s OK.

Regardless of why, you’ll probably continue incorporating online research into your research process, which means you’ll probably continue using Google! You want to be particularly careful when searching Google about the source types you find since Google results do not separate source types or provide source type filters like library search tools do.

In the next module, we’ll discuss evaluation strategies that are particularly helpful online, though, I would argue you want to evaluate your information regardless of if you are using Google or library search tools to find it!

Another thing to consider when looking for online sources, is to use the subject guides for suggestions on which websites and government sites are credible and relevant to your topic. These suggestions are a good place to get started if you’re not finding what you need through the library search tools.

Google Tips

When you’re searching Google you might as well do so as efficiently as you search in library tools! Click on the arrows below for some quick tips to help you become a Google expert!

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
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Google Scholar Tips

Another Google search tip is to leave Google and go to Google Scholar instead. Google Scholar looks and acts exactly like Google but instead of finding all types of sources and putting them in one result list, Google Scholar does some filtering and only brings you results from online academic journals and books, conference papers, theses and dissertations, preprints, abstracts, technical reports, and other scholarly literature, including court opinions and patents. While this is still a lot of source types and not all of them are peer-reviewed, it’s a good way of narrowing your Google searches.

The same Google search tips above apply to Google Scholar, but there’s a few more tricks I want to show you that only applies to your Scholar search. Click all the plus signs on the picture below to learn about the different features of Google Scholar.

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
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Search Strategies Summary

Bravo! You’ve completed Part 2: Search Strategies for Module 2 of LIB100. In addition to the reading for this week, you need to complete your Module 2 reflection by midnight this Thursday.

Part 2: Search Strategies Key Takeaways

As a result of completing Module 2, you should be able to

Identify main concepts of your research topic to create keywords.

Define how your own bias and the bias of search tools can impact your results.

Recognize the source types and subject matter found in popular library search tools.

Navigate the Barber Library website to locate search tools.

Select a search tool appropriate for your information need.

Put all the strategies together that we’ve learned so far to search.

Use the filters and toolbars of library search tools.

Efficiently search Google and Google Scholar.

IV

Part 3: Valuing Sources

Questions to Consider

As you read Part 3, consider the following:

How do you value information? Does that change as you read more?

How comfortable do you feel using the fact-checking strategies introduced here?

Why are citations important?

Part 3: Valuing Sources Outline

The following six chapters are in Part 3:

Reflecting On Your Critical Approach to Evaluation

Building a Fact-Checking Habit

The SIFT Method

Additional Fact-Checking Resources

Ethical Information User

Valuing Sources Summary

It should take approximately 60 minutes to complete Part 3.

Use the arrows at the bottom of each page to move forward and backward through the modules. Or, use the Contents menu in the top left hand corner to go to a particular section.

25

Reflecting On Your Critical Approach to Evaluation

Information Literacy Reflection Tool

This tool was created by a group of Oregon librarians to help students think about their information processes. Read through each statement, noting your 1-6 ranking and then calculate your total in the question below.

Text version of the questions.

Activity

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=183#h5p-16

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Building a Fact-Checking Habit

This part of the textbook is all about valuing information. I’ve emphasized several times already in this class that information often costs money—and it can be a lot of money! So by valuing information, I do mean acknowledging the time and energy that goes into information creation and how that is monetized and protected through legal structures like copyright.

Another interpretation of valuing information is recognizing the creators by giving credit to the original ideas and work of others through proper attribution and citation.

But an additional meaning of valuing information that we’ll address first is making informed choices about the information you’re using in your research and critiquing that information through careful evaluation of the creators, publications, and the systems in which the information was produced and dispersed to the audience.

We’ll talk about practical evaluation strategies, but before you can use those skills, you need to develop a habit.

The habit is simple. When you feel strong emotion—happiness, anger, pride, vindication—and that emotion pushes you to share a “fact” with others, STOP. Above all, these are the claims that you must fact-check.

Why? Because you’re already likely to check things you know are important to get right, and you’re predisposed to analyze things that put you in an intellectual frame of mind. But things that make you angry or overjoyed, well…our record as humans are not good with these things.

Let’s look at this Tweet as an example:

Text version of Tweet image.

You don’t need to know much of the background of this tweet to see its emotionally charged nature. President Trump had insulted Chuck Schumer, a Democratic Senator from New York, and characterized the tears that Schumer shed during a statement about refugees as “fake tears.”  This tweet reminds us that Senator Schumer’s great-grandmother died at the hands of the Nazis, which could explain Schumer’s emotional connection to the issue of refugees.

Or does it? Do we actually know that Schumer’s great-grandmother died at the hands of the Nazis? And if we are not sure this is true, should we really be retweeting it?

Our normal inclination is to ignore verification needs when we react strongly to content, and researchers have found that content that causes strong emotions (both positive and negative) spreads the fastest through our social networks. Savvy activists and advocates take advantage of this flaw of ours, getting past our filters by posting material that goes straight to our hearts.

Here’s another, non-political example (click on the image to watch):
Screenshot of Tweet that when clicked on will open to the Twitter video
Use your emotions as a reminder. Strong emotions should become a trigger for your new fact-checking habit. Every time content you want to share makes you feel rage, laughter, ridicule, or even a heartwarming buzz, spend 30 seconds fact-checking.  It will do you well.

This chapter was adapted from the following:

Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers by Michael A. Caulfield is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

27

The SIFT Method

Navigating Digital Information

Now that we’re in our fact-checking frame of mind, let’s start thinking about why fact-checking is an important part of your daily information practices. Watch and consider the following video and then learn more fact-checking strategies used by experts!

A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=189

SIFT Your sources

Mike Caulfield, Washington State University digital literacy expert, has helpfully condensed key fact-checking strategies into a short list of four moves, or things to do to quickly make a decision about whether or not a source is worthy of your attention:

Stop

Just a reminder to practice our new fact-checking habit! Get an emotional response? Take a moment to stop, ask yourself whether you know and trust the author, publisher, publication, or website. If you don’t, use the other fact-checking moves that follow, to get a better sense of what you’re looking at.

Investigate the Source

When investigating a source, fact-checkers read “laterally” across many websites. That is, they don’t spend much time on the source itself, but instead they quickly get off the page and see what others have said about the source. They open up many tabs in their browser, piecing together different bits of information from across the web to get a better picture of the source they’re investigating.You don’t have to do a three-hour investigation into a source before you engage with it. But if you’re reading a piece on economics, and the author is a Nobel prize-winning economist, that would be useful information. Likewise, if you’re watching a video on the many benefits of milk consumption, you would want to be aware if the video was produced by the dairy industry. This doesn’t mean the Nobel economist will always be right and that the dairy industry can’t ever be trusted. But knowing the expertise and agenda of the person who created the source is crucial to your interpretation of the information provided.

Watch and consider the following video to learn how to get a consensus on sources and how Wikipedia is helpful for this strategy.

A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=189

Find Better Coverage

Your best strategy in this case might actually be to find a better source altogether, to look for other coverage that includes trusted reporting or analysis on that same claim. Rather than relying on the source that you initially found, you can trade up for a higher quality source.What if the source you find is low-quality, or you can’t determine if it is reliable or not? Perhaps  you don’t really care about the source—you care about the claim that source is making. You want to know if it is true or false. You want to know if it represents a consensus viewpoint, or if it is the subject of much disagreement. A common example of this is a meme you might encounter on social media. The random person or group who posted the meme may be less important than the quote or claim the meme makes.

The point is that you’re not wedded to using that initial source. We have the internet! You can go out and find a better source, and invest your time there.

Watch and consider the following video demonstrating this strategy, noting how fact-checkers build a library of trusted sources they can rely on quickly.

A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=189

Trace Claims, Quotes, and Media to the Original Context

Much of what we find on the internet has been stripped of context. Maybe there’s a video of a fight between two people with one person acting as the aggressor. But what happened before that? What was clipped out of the video and what stayed in? Maybe there’s a picture that seems real but the caption could be misleading. Maybe a claim is made about a new medical treatment based on a research finding—but you’re not certain if the cited research paper actually said that.

The people who re-report these stories either get things wrong by mistake, or, in some cases, they are intentionally misleading us. In these cases you will want to trace the claim, quote, or media back to the source, so you can see it in its original context and get a sense of whether the version you saw was accurately presented. 

A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=189

This chapter was adapted from the following:

Introduction to College Research by Walter D. Butler, Aloha Sargent, and Kelsey Smith, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

28

Additional Fact-Checking Resources

A note on Wikipedia

The more you use these strategies, the easier it will be for you to incorporate SIFT into your information habits quickly. However, I always have to reassure students that yes, I am recommending you use Wikipedia in your evaluation methods.

Wikipedia is broadly misunderstood by faculty and students alike. While Wikipedia must be approached with caution, especially with articles that are covering contentious subjects or evolving events, it is often the best source to get a consensus viewpoint on a subject. Because the Wikipedia community has strict rules about sourcing facts to reliable sources, and because authors must adopt a neutral point of view, its articles are often the best available introduction to a subject on the web.

The focus on sourcing all claims has another beneficial effect. If you can find a claim expressed in a Wikipedia article, you can almost always follow the footnote on the claim to a reliable source. Scholars, reporters, and students can all benefit from using Wikipedia to quickly find authoritative sources for claims.

Additional Fact-Checking Sites

As mentioned in one of the videos you watched in the previous chapter, outside of Wikipedia professional fact-checkers have curated trusted sites so that they have a head start when evaluating information. To help you start developing your own collection, the following organizations are generally regarded as reputable fact-checking organizations focused on U.S. national news:

Politifact | Factcheck.org | Washington Post Fact Checker | Snopes
Truth be Told | NPR Fact-Check | Lie Detector (Spanish language) | Hoax Slayer

There are respected specialty sites cover niche areas such as climate or celebrities. Here are a few examples:

Climate Feedback
SciCheck
Quote Investigator

This chapter was adapted from the following:

Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers by Michael A. Caulfield is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

29

Ethical Information User

Contributing to the conversation

Way back in Part 2 of this textbook, we discussed scholarly sources. In that chapter, I stated that authors of scholarly articles are engaging in a conversation with each other, formulating and debating complex ideas, balancing competing perspectives, and frequently citing each other to build on previous work and advance the field.

Well, as a college student, whenever you complete an academic assignment, be it a research paper, a speech, or report in which you gather and synthesize information on a topic, you are participating in that conversation. Pretty cool, huh? Your work at COCC is a way to add your own voice to the scholarly conversation—by reviewing what research has been done, drawing connections and conclusions from published information, and adding your own experiences, opinions, and ideas about what previous research has shown.

Citing Sources

When we engage in conversations with other people, we often say things like, “I heard on the news today that…” or “The cashier at the store said…” When we do this, we not only back up and further support the point we are trying to make, but we also give more credibility to what we are saying by letting others know the origin of the information. It is also a good idea to let others know where our information came from when engaging in a scholarly conversation. A citation is a mention to another source and the phrase “citing your sources” means you’ve communicated the sources of information that you’ve used in your own work.

It is unethical to use somebody else’s information in your own work and not cite where you got that information. As long as you give credit where credit is due, using information from others to support your own thoughts, opinions, and research findings is good practice. Not only does it acknowledge the hard work of others, but it also shows that you did your research on the topic, you know what information exists about it, and you can integrate your knowledge into the existing research, continuing the conversation. You can see in certain chapters (including this one) I include references to other textbooks that I have taken from and adapted to create this textbook—so even I do it!

Watch and consider the following video discussing this concept as well as the practical side of citations, such as MLA and APA formatting.

A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=197

Plagiarism

You might have heard about plagiarism from instructors before. Basically instructors tell you to avoid it! But what is it? Plagiarism is when we use the ideas or research of others and fail to state where we got those ideas or research. We avoid stealing from others by providing citations, which lets our readers know where the information came from.

Whether you’re purposely passing off information as your own (i.e., copying and pasting text or paraphrasing another source without giving credit) or doing so unintentionally  (i.e., not knowing how to cite sources), plagiarism goes against the moral and ethical code for students. As a COCC student, you’ve agreed to be honest and fair in and out of the classroom by avoiding cheating or plagiarizing (it’s part of the Principles of Community in the Student Rights and Responsibilities handbook). But, beyond that, in this class we’ve learned about the effort it takes to create information, get it published, and distribute it to an audience, so it’s important to value information for many reasons, not just to get good grades.

Intellectual Property

When you avoid plagiarism by citing your sources, you are respecting other people’s intellectual property. Just like physical property that you can call your own, intellectual property describes a creation that can be owned and protected, most commonly using copyright, patents, and trademarks. Copyright is a type of licensing of intellectual property that gives you exclusive rights to the material, meaning others cannot legally copy, distribute, display, modify, or perform (e.g., a play or piece of music) without getting your permission to do so. Copyright is automatic, meaning you don’t have to register it through the U.S. Copyright Office. That picture you took of your pet doing something cute? You own that copyright. The doodle you made in the margins of your notes? You own that copyright, too. Copyright in the United States lasts the life of the creator plus an additional 70 years, so you own that copyright as will your descendants.

So when you find an image on Google and copy and paste it into your essay, are you violating copyright? Well, there are exceptions, and often educational uses give you some wiggle room. It might not be the most ethical, especially if you’re not giving credit to the creator, but you’re probably not going to get in trouble. One way to avoid the moral and legal dilemma of using copyrighted material is to look for the Creative Commons logo. This logo marks a Creative Commons license, which allow creators to define what they want others to be able to do and not do with their work. Instead of tracking down the creator and asking for permission, the license encourages reuse and, in some cases, additional creativity by permitting adaptations and remixes.

The content I adapted from other textbooks are licensed under Creative Commons, as is this entire textbook. It encourages anyone to use the material in whatever way works best for them, while allowing the conversation to continue and valuing the information they discovered.

This chapter was adapted from the following:

Introduction to College Research by Walter D. Butler, Aloha Sargent, and Kelsey Smith, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

30

Valuing Sources Summary

Well done! You’ve finished Part 3: Valuing Sources for Module 3 of LIB100. In addition to the reading for this week, you need to post a draft of your research scenario project by posting to the appropriate discussion thread and complete your Module 3 reflection by midnight this Thursday. Don’t forget to make some progress in your research journal in order to get my feedback before you submit the final product on the last day of class.

Part 3: Valuing Sources Key Takeaways

As a result of completing Module 3, you should be able to

Read sources like a fact-checker.

Incorporate SIFT into your information evaluation strategies.

Use information ethically.

V

Part 4: Using the Barber Library

Questions to Consider

As you read Part 4, consider the following:

When would you request items through the library?

What would be the easiest way for you to get help from the library?

Part 4: Using the Barber Library Outline

The following four chapters are in Part 4:

Navigating the Barber Library

Library Accounts

Getting Help

Using the Barber Library Summary

It should take approximately 30 minutes to complete Part 4.

Use the arrows at the bottom of each page to move forward and backward through the modules. Or, use the Contents menu in the top left hand corner to go to a particular section.

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Navigating the Barber Library

By now, you should feel pretty confident in navigating the Barber Library website. However, what would happen if you needed to come to the library building in Bend to pick up a book at the circulation desk, whatever that is (this activity is still allowed during COVID closures!) Or use one of the Oregon study rooms to study (this activity will one day be allowed again!)

For the day you need to come visit, let’s take a virtual  tour of the library building!

Activity

Click on this link to open the tour in new window: https://barber.cocc.edu/wp/tutorials/virtual-tour/

In the tour, click and hold to drag for 360 views, click on the arrow to enter a new area of the library, and click on the plus sign to learn more about that area.

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Library Accounts

Accounts Overview

You have several COCC accounts as a student, all managed by your COCC email address and email password. Well, get ready toMy Library Account access box add more accounts to your total tally because the library has a few for you as well! All of your accounts are accessed by the green My Library Account box on the homepage.

First up, your general library account. This account controls your checkouts, renewals, and any fines or blocks on your account.

The second account is your Summit account. You might have seen Summit written in several places on the library website, but this isn’t referencing the high school or a peak on a mountain. Instead, it’s what we call a group of  39 Pacific Northwest libraries who have agreed to share materials. Your Summit account is what you use to request items from these libraries and see your checkout information, such as when something is due. Because we have an agreement with Summit libraries, you don’t have to wait too long, usually an average of 3 days, before you receive your requested item and items can be sent to any COCC campus, so no traveling to Bend necessary.

Your last account is your Interlibrary Loan (ILL) Account. Your library and Summit accounts control all physical items you’ve requested from the Barber Library. But I’m sure a majority of the material you’ll use for class research will be online and, while the library has a lot, we don’t have everything that exists. If you can’t find an item in our collection (or you can only find the abstract or summary of an item) we request it through your ILL account. We look beyond Bend, beyond the Pacific Northwest, and sometimes even beyond the United States to request from libraries all over. This account is unique because, unlike every other COCC account, you’ll log in with your email address but without the @cocc.edu and your email password. You’ll usually wait an average of 24 hours to receive online ILL requests and then you can download the article to save to your computer to keep! It’s a good idea to download the articles you receive since you have a limited number of views when you’re looking through the ILL account page.

Accessing Your Accounts

Click all the plus signs on the picture below to learn about the different areas of your accounts access pages.

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=204#h5p-19

Search Tool Accounts

A quick note about other accounts you might create with library search tools. In many search tools linked on the library website, you are able to create accounts that give you options like saving articles, translations, highlighting passages, and making notes. Those accounts are provided by the company that owns the search tool, like EBSCO or Gale. Meaning, those accounts are beyond the library’s control and you would need to contact the company for help.

33

Getting Help

Now that you’ve taken LIB100, you’ll never need help again, right? Not at all! Librarians exist to help you find information and use our resources, so you should definitely take advantage of all our help options! At any stage of the resource process, reach out on the library website by clicking the purple Help box on the homepage or look for the Ask Us! icon on library webpages.

Click all the plus signs on the picture below to learn about the different help options available to you.

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/findinginfo/?p=206#h5p-20

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Using the Barber Library Summary

Not only have you finished Part 4: Using the Barber Library for Module 4, but you’ve almost finished LIB100! Awesome job! Before you celebrate too hard, don’t forget the last few things you have to do to wrap up the class. In addition to the reading for this week, you need to upload your final research scenario project in the Module 4 area, complete your research journal, complete your (final) Module 4 reflection by midnight Sunday, and give yourself a round of applause for a job well done!

Part 4: Using the Barber Library Key Takeaways

As a result of completing Module 4, you should be able to

Navigate your way around the Barber Library building.

List the three accounts you have through the library and what you use each for.

Use the multiple help options the library offers.

And just generally, as a result of completing LIB100 you should feel more confident in each of the four learning outcomes of the class:

Identify key services and resources within Barber Library’s physical and online environment.

Demonstrate proficiency in selecting a research tool appropriate to the type of information needed.

Demonstrate proficiency in using research tools.

Demonstrate proficiency in evaluating and responsibly using information.

1

Additional Book Formats

It is best to read this book online in order to immediately have access to all activities and videos in addition to the text. However, if you are unable to read elements of this book online, you are able to download the book and read the file without consistent Internet access. If you choose this option, please make sure you’re returning to activities and videos when you’re able to in order to fully engage with all LIB100 content.

PDF Format | Click here to download
eReader (ePub) | Click here to download