Author Archives: blake.scott

10 Pieces of Advice to Freshman about Research

1. Google is your best friend.
2. Academic Search Complete is your second best friend.
3. Don’t plagiarize, but if you do do it well.
4. If you get sources make sure its from reliable people.
5. Field searching, its pretty good.
6. “Ands” and “Ors” are very important
7. When you dont know if you should cite something, cite it anyway
8. Journals will normally be the best type of source you can get
9. Use controlled vocabulary.
10. If you want to use an old essay, it better be damn good.

1. Lessig, Lawrence. Free culture : how big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity. New York : Penguin Press, 2004. Print.
2. Yardi, Sarita, and Danah Boyd. “Dynamic Debates: An Analysis of Group Polarization Over Time on Twitter.” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 30.5 (2010): 316-327. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 29 Nov. 2010.
3. Boyd, D.M., and N.B. Ellison. “Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13.1 (2007): Article 11. Web. Accessed Nov. 29, 2010
4. “The New York World’s Fair, 1939-40 – Treasures of The New York Public Library”. YouTube.com. 01 October 2008. NewYorkPublicLibrary. Accessed Nov. 29, 2010                <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUAHKy3QlLc>
5. Facebook, “Facebook’s Priacvy Policy.” Facebook. 5 Oct. 2010. Web. Accessed 29 Nov. 2010. < http://www.facebook.com/policy.php>

Background: (Fernback, 1999)

Exhibits: (Dalton, Elias, & Wandersman, 2001)

Arguments: (Alinsky, 1971)

Methods: (Abu-Lughod, 1991)

Three things that I learned today was that I learned you can view how much an author is cited for a certain article or research paper. Two I learned that most professors have a CV which is basically their resume. And also I learned that Marquis Who’s Who database can be useful when you want to find certain information about an author or one of his papers.
One thing I am still unclear of is that if we cant find anything on any of the databases that pertains to how much an author is cited, and if google is not necessarily dependable, then what is the best option to locating how much something gets cited?

When I searched for information technology, the sorted alot by where the topic may be a big deal, such as certain countries or cities. It also sorted things in lesser sub topics to hone in on one specific idea you may be looking for. In general it also sorts alphabetically so if you know what your looking for you can just find it, rather than searching around for it.