Monthly Archives: September 2011

Good research begins with a question and ends up with new ones. What does this mean exactly?

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Yuna Chong

A good research begins with a question. The question is what you want to find out more about. You would usually want an answer after finishing the research on the question but you end up with more questions. When, one part is answered, there are more things that we become curious about. Lt’s say your research question is: who made google? The answer would be the two stanford students. But then, you wonder why they made google and who they really are. So, you end up learning more.
I don’t think I answered the question…

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Why We Read the Article by Weaver and Bimber

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Stephen Francoeur

I don’t think I finished explaining why the article by Weaver and Bimber about Google News and LexisNexis connects up with the learning goals for this class:

  • It’s partly about Google. The more you know about Google and its many services the better you’ll be able to design a research question about Google for your final project in this class.
  • The article exposes some of the inner workings of databases (specifically, LexisNexis) and search engines (Google), which will strengthen your overall understanding of the tools you use to find sources.
  • The article is a nice model of a scholarly journal article, a genre of writing that is probably new to most of you but is one that you’ll need to become familiar with as college students working on research assignments throughout your years here at Baruch.
  • The authors offer on page 519 three nicely crafted research questions that model what I expect of you for your final projects.

Weaver, David A., and Bruce Bimber. “Finding News Stories: A Comparison of Searches Using LexisNexis and Google News.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 85.3 (2008): 515-530. Communication & Mass Media Complete. EBSCO. Web. 23 Aug. 2011.

Posted in Class Discussions | 4 Comments

Discussion Topics for 19 September 2011 Class

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Stephen Francoeur

If you didn’t get a chance to speak up in class today, you can earn points for class participation by writing your own blog post here or by commenting on a recent post written by me or one of your classmates. If you’re looking for something to write about that was discussed in class, here are some provocations to respond to here:

  • Good research begins with a question and ends up with new ones. What does this mean exactly?
  • What is a data dump and in what ways is not the same thing as real research?
  • In the article by Weaver and Bimber we talked about today, where you can see evidence of existing discourses that they authors were tapping into?
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How to Gets Blog Posts Delivered Daily by Email

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Stephen Francoeur
  1. Go to Feed My Inbox
  2. Where it says “Website or Feed URL” copy and paste this in: http://feedstitch.com/7771/lib-1015-fall-2011-posts-and-comments.rss
  3. Where it says “Your Email Address,” type in whatever email address you use the most.
  4. Click the “Submit” button.
  5. You should receive an email in a few minutes from the Feed My Inbox service. That email will have a confirmation link that you must click to authorize the service and make it actually start up.
Posted in Announcements | 2 Comments

Google to Answer Questions This Week about Antitrust Issues

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Stephen Francoeur

This week, the chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt will be in Washington answering the questions of a Senate committee investigating antitrust issues around Google’s business practices. Details on this story can be found in this New York Times article from 18 September 2011.

Lohr, Steve and Clair Cain Miller. “Scrutinizing Google’s Reign.” New York Times. New York Times, 18 Sep. 2011. Web. 19 Sep. 2011.

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Comments on the 5 Books about Google Assignment

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Stephen Francoeur

I’ve now graded everyone’s homework that asked you to list five books about Google and break down the call number using the outline of the Library of Congress Classification system. If you go into Google Documents and find your homework, you should see my comments on the side of the document, including your grade. As with all homework assignments, you can earn a maximum of 50 points. For this assignment, I was making sure that each book was actually about Google (a few of you selected books that weren’t really about Google) and that you had broken down the call number into the broad and narrow topics that are indicated by the number.

These are the things I hope that you noticed as you worked on the assignment:

  • all the books on Google are not in one place in the library and are instead scattered around in different subject areas, such as:
    • HD28 – HD70: Management. Industrial management
    • HD9680 – HD9714: Mechanical industries. Including electric utilities, electronic
      industries, and machinery
    • HF5801 -HF6182: Advertising
    • K85-K89: Legal research
    • LB1025 – LB1050.75: Teaching (Principles and practice)
    • TK5101 – TK6720 (Telecommunication. Including telegraphy, telephone, radio, radar, television)
    • Z674.7 – Z674.83: Library information networks
  • the full call number indicates what is usually a fairly narrow topic
  • there are a wealth of topics related to Google that you may want to investigate further for your final project in the class

 

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Clarification about Reading for September 14

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Stephen Francoeur

In looking at the list of items on reserve for our class, I can see that there might be a disconnect between what the syllabus tells you to read for September 14 (Wednesday) and what is actually listed on reserve. Please read the following two items listed on the course reserve page for my section of LIB 1015:

  • Watts, Margit Misangyi. “I Wonder If…Doing Research,” in College: We Make the Road By Walking. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2007. 221-226.
  • Watts, Margit Misangyi. “Understanding Scholarly Conversations,” in College: We Make the Road By Walking. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2007. 209-210.

These two items are the 3rd to last and the 2nd to last ones on the list. Do not read the last item on the list, which is from a previous semester and is taken from an older edition of the book.

If you are going to the course reserve page from off campus, clicking on the link should first present you with a login page from Baruch that says “Newman Library – Baruch College / Remote Authentication” and asks you to type in your Baruch username and password. Once you get past that login page for the course reserve system (it’s a white page that says “LIB1015 – Information Research in Social Sciences and Humanities (Fall 2011) – Francoeur.” I gave out the password for this page in class; please email me or a classmate if you have forgotten it.

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Dangers of Auto-Complete

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Stephen Francoeur

A researcher at Microsoft, danah boyd (yes, she intentionally spells her first and last name all in lower case letter), recently wrote on her blog about how a clever feature that Google introduced a while ago can lead casual searchers to make erroneous assumptions. At issue is the auto-complete feature in the Google search box, which starts to suggest terms to complete your search query as you are typing it in. Those suggestions can be quite helpful as you try to think through just what it is you are trying to search for and how to spell your search words. But boyd argues that the naive searcher might be led to believe that the phrases that Google’s auto-complete suggests to you are somehow connected to statements actually found on websites.

Here is a scenario that boyd offers as an example of what can happen:

You’re a 16-year-old Muslim kid in America. Say your name is Mohammad Abdullah. Your schoolmates are convinced that you’re a terrorist. They keep typing in Google queries likes “is Mohammad Abdullah a terrorist?” and “Mohammad Abdullah al Qaeda.” Google’s search engine learns. All of a sudden, auto-complete starts suggesting terms like “Al Qaeda” as the next term in relation to your name. You know that colleges are looking up your name and you’re afraid of the impression that they might get based on that auto-complete. You are already getting hostile comments in your hometown, a decidedly anti-Muslim environment. You know that you have nothing to do with Al Qaeda, but Google gives the impression that you do. And people are drawing that conclusion. You write to Google but nothing comes of it. What do you do?

What do you think? Do you think people might really jump to unreasonable conclusions based on what suggestions auto-complete offers?

boyd, danah. “Guilt Through Algorithmic Association.” apophenia, 12 Sep. 2011. Web. 13 Sep. 2011.

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“Inside the Mind of Google”

Posted on September 13, 2011 by cl129792

After watching this video about Google, I have gather new insight towards this company how it functions. Before watching this video i kept wondering how Google made it’s money. I thought since Google was free to use how did they make money? However after watching this video i realized the enormous amounts of advertising Google contributes to.

On another note, i feel that if i were to start a research project on Google, i believe that the Wikipedia entry would be a more viable source. Wikipedia offers more recent and more detailed information on the company and its progressions.

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Discussing the Documentary about Google

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Stephen Francoeur

In class today, we watched “Inside the Mind of Google,” which was originally broadcast on CNBC on February 9, 2010. We then compared it to the entries in Wikipedia for “Google” and “Googlization.” Here are some questions you can respond to either as a comment on this post, or as a comment on another post that one of your classmates has published about today’s discussion, or as your own original post.

  • What are three things that you learned about Google that you think are essential to understanding the company? Defend why those things are important to an understanding of Google?
  • If you could make an updated version of the video, what content would you add?
  • If you were about to start a research project that involved Google in some way, which source would give you a better overview: the video or the Wikipedia entry on Google?
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