Category Archives: Class Discussions

We feel that this class furthered our ability to make detailed and relevant searches to aid us in our work.  It helped us to understand how to develop an accurate, descriptive, specific research question.  It also helped us distinguish the differences and similarities between various articles, journals, peer-reviewed journals, etc.

One thing that we’ve wished we had spent more time covering is evaluating the quality of information provided by a given source/various sources and whether they’re reliable in terms of helping us in our work.

1. The things that we learned that were useful were learning about databases, authority of authors, and field searching. Databases will be useful for us because we learned how to find relevant sources while researching and we can use this technique when we have to research in the future. Authority of authors will be useful for us because we now know how to identify and determine if an author is credible and reliable. Field searching will be useful because we can narrow down our searches and get sources that are more specific to what we are trying to research about.

2. One thing that we all think we should have learned more about was BEAM. We feel like we did not cover this topic as much as we covered topics. We think that we should have focused on it more than we did.

-Erum Zubair, Amanda Zeng, Kyungheon Chung

1) Many things we have learned this semester has been very useful and will be in the future. Of theses topics I fell the most useful things we’ve learned are citations and complex and accurate searches as well as being able to crate a focused research topic and focused question.

2) I would have spent more time on is how to narrow down database searches even further

Write your own blog post here that answers these two questions:

What three things that you learned this semester about doing research have been the most useful to you (or are likely to be the most useful to you)? Please explain why for each of those things.

Amongst all the useful research related info that I’ve absorbed in this class, I find the “basic search”, “focusing research questions”, and “evaluating the quality of sources” most interesting. I use basic search quarries on a daily bases. This class enhanced my use of the “and” and “or” terms in my searches. I know when and how to utilize each to get the maximum amount of relevant search results. I learned to create interesting research questions, that go indepth, and allow me to professionally assess my topics. I also now know how to evaluate sources for relevance, accuracy, and reputability.
What is one thing that you wish we had spent more time covering in class or that we failed to get to in class? Why do you wish we had gotten to that?

I think that we should have spent more time discussing Google’s algorithms and procedures that allow us to efficeently utilize their search services.

One of the things i wish we learned is how to narrow down databases to subjects.

Second thing i wish we went over longer is how to find citations for authors or how many citations an author has gotten altogether.

Third thing i wish we spent more time together as a group for the lc 14

NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research)

This database specializes in subjects like economics, public policy, and business. More specifically this database is compiled of research regarding topics like the state of the aggregate economy, the fluctuations of the business cycle, economic effects of public policies and the other issues relevant to long term economic growth.

This database provides information via formats like books and working papers.\

I wasn’t able to find an option for controlled vocabulary in this database. But this database does constantly refer to “economics”, “policy”, and “business”.

This database has a unique window on its homepage titled “Most frequently requested items”.

AP Images (The Associated Press)

AP Images is a media archive composed of photographs, images, graphics, audio and text files in entertainment, fashion, news and sports coverage. This archive deals with a multitude of subject areas since it contains a diverse library of media. This archive is updated to reflect current events.

This is a media archive containing image files, audio files, video files, and some text.

There is no controlled vocabulary.

This database’s homepage is constantly updated with images relevant to current events.