Author Archives: Lorraine Chen

1. Not everything is found in Google.  There is an entire hidden, unknown world of information that cannot be found by using the Google search engine.  The reason for this is because there are subscription databases that store and protect information from public view.

2. Citations are more complicated than you think. For example: even though they are both the same article, the citation for a newspaper article is different than the citation for a newspaper article retrieved in an online database.

3. Scholarly sources such as peer-reviewed journals are among the best types of information because they are the most reliable.

4. Wikipedia is a great source for background research, but it probably should not be heavily used for papers, because it can easily be changed by anyone.

5. Use the sources at the bottom of the Wikipedia page.  If you see something on a wikipedia entry that seems questionable, those sources are the facts for what the entry was based on.

6. Use information that has been produced by a reliable person; this means that you don’t look to just anyone, who is speaking or ranting about the topic. For example: an article written by a middle school student on missiles is less likely to be less reliable than an article written by a military engineer.

7. The better your sources, the better your paper can be.

8.

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.

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.

Boyd, Danah M. and Nicole B. Ellison. “Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13.1 (2007): n. pag. Web. 29 Nov. 2010.

Chornesky, Jessica and Ivo Stainoff. “The New York World’s Fair, 1936-40 – Treasures of The New York Public Library.” YouTube. YouTube. 1 Oct. 2008. Web. 29 Nov. 2010.

Facebook. Privacy Policy. Facebook, 2010. Web. 29 Nov. 2010.

Background: Abu-Lughod, 1991

Exhibit: Subrahmanyam, Reich, Waechter, & Espinoza, 2008

Argument: Blanchard, 2007

Method: McMillan and Chavis, 1986

Today, I learned that when researching sources, it is also important to look at the author of the source.  Looking at the author’s background can provide a new perspective to inspect and use the source because we can see the author’s relationship to the information he is giving us. We not only look at the credibility of a source in the process of picking our sources, we also look at the people who created them.  The credibility of a scholarly source lies in the accuracy and truthfulness of the content, and the connection that the author has with the content.  The author should have a strong connection to the publications that he creates because as an expert in that specific field of information, he is more knowledgeable and experienced. A source written by an expert who has study and practiced in the field would be better than a source written by the common person who only has common sense, general knowledge, of the field.

In evaluation of sources, I am still uncertain about whether the popularity of the source would have anything to do with its credibility. I don’t think it would be a huge factor in my choice of sources, because it improves on the source’s content itself, but I wonder if the number of times that it is cited is a reflection of how truthful it may seem.

The subject headings listed in the results begin with the phrase “Information technology” and subdivides into other categories, which are arranged alphabetically. Some of the subdivisions are by areas, countries. Those subdivisions in turn branch out to further subdivisions, indicated by two dashes in a row.