10/31 Sources and Uses

Book 

1. You will likely find more accurate and extensive information depending on the author. If it is a scholar, a professional, an expert in a certain field, or someone who experienced a certain event firsthand, then you can rely more on them. 
2. This is actually one of the best sources that you can use. It is a source that is actually printed in paper, instead of being circulated on the web, which is not a bad place to find a source, it's just that you can always count on books. 
3. Depending on what I'm researching for, I could use this source to support my argument and further my point. 

Blog post

1. This source really depends on who is the author of the blog post and what they are posting about. More likely with blog posts, you will find people who are more opinion oriented than fact oriented. 
2. Again, it depends on the author and what the post is about. I think this could be a very good source because, depending on when you get it, it could be something that is a really fresh topic and debate. So getting that most recent blog post can be a great positive for your paper. 
3. You could use this source to write about a certain person's view. In this case, opinion oriented blog posts wouldn't be bad, not that they really are. With that said, you could also use it to review what facts that person used, how they used them, and if they are even correct. 

Scholarly journal article

1. These can be as dependable as books because these are written by scholars, you know these are people who know their stuff and would give an expert review and good research for your topic. 
2. This is another great source to use because it is more reliable and carries a lot of credibility. 
3. You could use this source to quote what these experts say to, again, support your argument or facts. 

Wikipedia

1. You could find very detailed information, but you wouldn't be able to completely rely on it. Sometimes you can find a very broad description or summary too. 
2. Generally, this is not a reliable source, so it could be considered bad. Some of their info is taken from a more credible source, but most of it is stuff that anybody can edit. So, not good. 
3. I would not use this as a source in my paper, but one could use it to show how unreliable of a site it is. 

Podcast

1. All I remember from watching any podcast is that it was more about giving helpful information and statistics. 
2. It would be a good source to use, mostly depending on what you are writing about. ( I feel I am reiterating myself.) Especially if there are a lot of statistics. 
3. You could use this source like scholarly journals and books, to quote what a person has said.

10/29 Article Research Email Steps

The first thing that I did was look for the article under a medical journal. I did find it but it did not have the full text. So then I copied and pasted the title into the main search engine in Galileo. It was the first article that showed up. I clicked on it and made sure it had the full text. The next thing I did was click on the envelope icon to the right of the screen to email to Ms. Pashia.

10/24 Annotated Bibliography

An annotated bibliography is much like our citation pages for our papers, except they include summaries of what that citation is in reference to your paper. Annotated bibliographies, when published, help readers who are looking into a certain book, article, etc., know what that book is about, even what the pros and cons are too. Unpublished, they still help people, students like us so that we can know what that book or article is about so we don't have to read the book or article ourselves. Annotated bibliographies are also very important to our paper because they provide the citations for the books, articles, etc. that we have used.

I believe you are requiring us to do one in class because you are preparing us for our other classes. Much like our other assignments during this course, it's practice. Even if we are still not sure, these homework assignments are like trial and error, we learn from the mistakes and learn to perfect them. Not that an annotated bibliography is this masterful piece of work, but it is always good to have all these little things done well. In the end, it will reflect how we do our work and what is going to be seen in our papers.

10/24 Class Work Review

I feel like I have said this before in one of my posts, so here's to déjà vu and reiteration. You would not be able to do library research without dealing with plagiarism, paraphrasing correctly, copyright vs. plagiarism, and the different types of licenses. Research is about exploring a certain topic because you either want to find certain information to extend your knowledge or that and you need to for a research paper for a class. Research is also about finding facts, opinions, and related documents to your very topic. Those factors are key to research because they are the components of your paper that make up for your lack of knowledge and expertise in a certain area. Therefore, plagiarism becomes super important because you are quoting, paraphrasing, etc. someone else's work and you want your paper to be taken seriously. Sometimes you may do a slideshow or have a blog post where you need to research a image to post, knowing what the differences are between the types of licenses and copyright vs. plagiarism is the key roles for those components in library research.
Just as we have applied this knowledge in this class, we can do the same for our other classes. If I were to be doing a paper for my history class that required an extra source, whether it be newspaper, image, diary entry, etc., then I would be able to find those sources using my knowledge. I would be able to know how to cite so I do not plagiarize and know in what ways I can use it under the type of license. As for any questions, I do not have any at the moment.

License Research

http://pixabay.com/en/book-books-circle-curly-education-2869/
Image-Creative Commons
Petr Kratochvil. (Photographer). (2012). Book Tunnel.[Photograph], Retrieved October 22, 2012, from: http://pixabay.com/en/book-books-circle-curly-education-2869/

Segments

The first segment, Trouble for Elsevier, was about the academic journal publishing group named Elsevier, who is being accused from the pricing of their journal subscriptions to not paying the authors enough. The segment entails what started this news story- Timothy Gowers blog post about petitioning to not have his work published in the journals ran by Elsevier.

The second segment, New England Journal of Medicine's 200th Anniversary, talked of the many contributions the journal has made, not only to the medical world, but ultimately to the whole world. It pointed out early on in the segment its contrast to Elsevier, saying that they make their articles freely available, whereas Elsevier wants to charge people to read published articles that are supposed to be made available to the public in the first place.

The third segment, The Changing Nature of Knowledge, talked about how the access of knowledge has changed. Especially noted is the access of knowledge through the internet and how you could just enter your research topic in a search engine and have a plethora of information, including forum discussions and the like, discussing that topic. This available knowledge is a good thing because it helps countless other gain that knowledge and use it to better their lives.

The common theme that I found through these three segments was effects of how available knowledge and information is to the general public and scholars. My reaction to the first story was that I was pretty surprised. In the segment, it said that Elsevier stated that their prices for each article have dropped. If that is so, why are so many schools libraries suffering from the high prices of journal subscriptions? Why would librarians make such statements as done on the segment? My reaction to the second segment was appreciation for a medical journal that believes in the general public and their important role in the medical world. I loved the fact that they considered the availability of the journal to people in countries who could not afford to pay for them. You could tell what their goals are by what they are doing and that they genuinely care about people and not about earning money. Finally, my reaction to the third segment was mainly just agreement with what the author talked about in his book. I support the internet and its role in furthering the knowledge of many people. A word that has been used a lot in my post here is availability, what I think is key in knowledge! It needs to be available for others, in order for life to keep going.

These stories completely relate to me, especially in my role as an undergraduate researcher. The answer is in that one word alone- researcher! How can I research if there is no available information? How can I research if there are no journals due to the cost of the subscriptions? The internet helps not only me, but it helps the university; it is the central meeting place for millions of people basically to get whatever they want. Restriction on knowledge is absolute madness. I understand that authors need to get paid for the extensive work they do on researching, but to deny people knowledge through journal articles is absolutely ridiculous. Knowledge is essential for us to become experts ourselves; we are the next generation of teachers, scientists, engineers, etc. We need these articles, whether it be for homework or for our own personal interest. 

10/17 Plagiarism and Copyright Violation

1. Plagiarism is when a person takes another person’s work and calls it their own OR they may not call it their own BUT fail to give proper credit to the original person. The latter is the category what I believe many college students and other people fall into. I blame it on lack of knowledge and instruction. Plagiarism can obviously be very purposeful too. 

2. Plagiarism is different from copyright violation by technicalities. Copyright violation is when you are allowed so much room to use somebody’s work. This mainly deals with the fact that you have to get permission to use the work, which is usually work that has huge media attention, fame, recognition, or anything that is getting big profit in sales. Plagiarism is when you use work yourself, where you don’t have to get permission from the author themselves, and you fail to give credit or cite, where that is your permission from the author.

3. An example of plagiarism that is NOT copyright violation is when a paper is written, especially one of importance- college paper, research, analytic etc.- where you need sources. Failure to have a reference page, or citing page, or any type of citation to that author is plagiarism. Many times when you do not have proper or “to the T” citation, you could get in big trouble for that as well. 

4. An example of copyright violation that is NOT plagiarism is when an organization uses a clip from a movie or a part of a song that they do not have permission to use. Even though that organization may be using that movie clip or song bit in a positive way, or even to promote either, they have to get permission. This is because they are advertising that movie or song and that movie or song has rights. Maybe known as royalties, they get and deserve money for whenever it is used to someone else’s benefit.

10/10 Conversation Insertion

I'm not necessarily a person to try and impress people with what knowledge I have on a certain subject. This is because I don't want to make a fool of myself and say the wrong information. If I am seriously confident that I got my facts straight, then I say something. So for instance, let's bank that I do know and am really confident. I don't want to just straight up enter the conversation and cut the person off of what they are saying; neither do I want to tell them they are completely wrong and do not know what they are talking about. My English 1101 teacher, Mr. Taylor, taught me to always be accepting of the other person's side, not that I have to agree, but there is a certain amount of respect due to the other person's view and knowledge. Furthermore, you want the other person to be just as much open to what you have to say and your knowledge on the subject as much as you are. So how I jump into a conversation is I let them finish what they are saying and then start with agreeing with something that they said. If I want to contradict what they said, or further what they said, with evidence that disproves or proves what they said, I will make a transition into that after I make an agreement with them.

With that said, being that I am there in person at a party, I would not have any papers to back up what I say. However, I do have my phone (in this hypothetical situation, I would have a sick iPhone that has great quality for showing videos!) where I can pull up videos. I could even be specific on dates and names for this subject that could provide me credibility and reliability on what I am saying. I don't want to get too deep, but deep enough that I know what I am talking about. How I would bring this around to a close, is thinking of something that shows support on my part for what the other person says so as to keep that party-air feel. :)

If I am the other person encountering someone who comes up to join my conversation with a friend, I will first listen to all of what they say, while making note of certain things they say that might throw up red flags for me. Those red flags could be something that these people need to further what they say, clarify, or provide references to dates, names, or situations. On this side of this situation, it's just a matter of the person providing references that I could research on my own time and for that moment sound credible. It's not a matter of acting macho or being a know-it-all, but that is not to say that I won't be impressed by that person's knowledge; I'm always looking to be enlightened and taught something that I don't know, especially something of interest to me.

10/3 Filter Bubbles and Databases

I do not believe the basic idea of a filter bubble applies to the different databases. With the databases that we use through our library, we are controlling what we are seeing. This comes down to every detail, which is evident on how many different selections we can make to narrow or broaden our search. Such as selecting specific dates, your subject area, or if you want it to be full text or peer reviewed.

Also, because we are dealing with the library databases, we don’t have to worry about all the junk, spam, or unrelated matter that comes up when using many search engines. The databases are organized with the plethora of databases available. Granted there are those unnecessary articles that come up, but in some way they are at least connected to our search. You can see this by the common or similar word(s) and related articles in your search. At least it is related and is not something completely random.

 

Another point to make with the databases is that they are mostly known to be used for educational purposes, whereas when you search through common search engines, you’re dealing with sites that want as many visitors as possible. So as discussed in the video and steps to take to decrease our chances for filter bubbles, these sites/companies track our visitations and thus, filter our search to keep us within that area of searching. In conclusion, it is really nice to have these databases, because after all we want legit and credible resources!!