Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [190]
The most specialized databases are those whose primary purpose is not to provide full text but to index all of the major journals, along with books and/or book chapters, in a discipline, regardless of where the full text to that journal can be found. These electronic indexes provide basic bibliographic information and sometimes an abstract (summary) of the article or book chapter. (See Scholarly Indexes earlier in the chapter.)
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Try This 14.1: Tuning in to Your Research Environment: Four Exercises
Every university and college is different, each with its own points of access to information. Following are some exercises to help you familiarize yourself with your own scholarly environment.
Exercise #1: Go to your library’s reference desk and get a list of all the scholarly journal indexes available electronically at your school. Then get a list of all online, full-text databases available to you.
Exercise #2: Contact your reference librarian to get a list of all the journals the library subscribes to electronically. Then get a list of all journals available at your library either in print or electronically in your major area of study.
Exercise #3: Ask the reference librarian about web access in general for your major area of study. What tips can the librarian give you about doing electronic research at your academic institution? Are there any special databases, web search engines/directories, or indexes you should consult in your research?
Exercise #4: Try out some or all of the full-text databases available on your campus. Now try the same searches in a scholarly index. What differences do you see in the quality/scope of the information?
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Eight Tips for Locating and Evaluating Electronic Sources
Tip #1: Backspacing “Backspacing” a URL can be an effective way to evaluate a website. It may reveal authorship or institutional affiliation. To do this, place the cursor at the end of the URL and then backspace to the last slash and press Enter. Continue backspacing to each preceding slash, examining each level as you go.
Tip #2: Using WHOIS WHOIS (www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp) is an Internet service that allows anyone to find out who’s behind a website.
Tip #3: Beware of the in a Web Address Many educational institutions allow the creation of personal home pages by students and faculty. While the domain name remains .edu in these cases, the fact that they are personal means that pretty much anything can be posted and so cannot assure academic quality.
Tip #4: Phrase Searching Not finding relevant information? Try using quotation marks around key phrases in your search string. For example, search in Google for this phrase, enclosed in quotation marks: “whose woods these are I think I know.”
Tip #5: Title Searching Still finding irrelevant information? Limit your search to the titles of web documents. A title search is an option in several search engines, among them Yahoo (advanced search) (http://search.yahoo.com) and Google (advanced search) (www.google.com).
Tip #6: Wikipedia Discussion Tab Use Wikipedia to full advantage by clicking on the discussion tab located at the top of Wikipedia entries. The discussion tabs expose the often intense debates that rage behind the scenes on topics like marijuana, genocide, and Islam. The discussion tab is an excellent source for locating paper topics because it highlights ongoing sources of controversy—those areas worthy of additional writing and research. To find the most controversial topics at any given moment, visit Wikipedia’s Controversial Issues page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_controversial_issues).
Tip #7: Full Text The widest selection