Accessing information
- 2. Accessing information You will be able to find needed information effectively and efficiently by: A. Selecting appropriate methods and tools for accessing information B. Using effective search strategies C. Obtaining relevant information
- 3. The information literate person uses CRITICAL THINKING to negotiate information overload and asks: 1. What information do I need to address this problem? (recognising) 2. Where can I get it? (accessing) 3. How do I know if this information is reliable or adequate? (evaluating)
- 4. Methods and tools ◦Reading ◦Listening ◦Viewing ◦Feeling (It IS kind of that simple…..)
- 5. Reading information Consider: ◦Your expectations.. ‘the answer is out there’ ◦Potential for passive reception - no thought ◦Very quick decisions about usefulness (30 seconds) ◦Your professional integrity: don’t go for what is “good enough” but what is “best” ◦You DO judge a book by its cover! Tools include: ◦ Accessing historical documents ◦ Skim and scan skills ◦Organising written material
- 6. Listening to information ◦ Personal communications (including wisdom) ◦ Interviews ◦ Surveys ◦ Group work ◦ Panels/ submissions ◦ Debates Tools include: ◦ Keeping a diary-record ◦ Shorthand/notes ◦ Using technology ◦ Checking back with speaker
- 7. Viewing information ◦ Don’t be seduced by design ◦ Don’t just believe plausible presentation/official looking sites ◦ Remember visual images can be manipulated ◦ A picture tells a thousand words? ◦ YouTube also posts conferences, academic content ◦ Participant observation ◦ Photos/ images ◦ TV/Documentaries ◦ Cultural practices
- 8. Feeling for information ◦ Intuition ◦ Sense ◦ Experience ◦ Hunches Tools include: ◦ Describing in a written form ◦ Checking out with others/ask ◦ Test it out ◦ Reflection ◦ Journaling ◦ Referencing: Auto biographical
- 9. Retrieving information Primary visits : experts, community resources, professional associations How to retrieve: surveys, letters, phone calls , email, collating Practical details: document delivery, flights to National library, archives, time
- 10. Problems of the WWW ◦ How to narrow searches ◦ Which search engines may be best for a topic ◦ Sorting out disinformation and misinformation; judging opinion, rumour, propaganda ◦ Understanding the status of collaboratively generated and edited information ◦ Being selective/ often distracted by interesting stuff ◦ Not having skills to skim and scan for meaning ◦ Not able to synthesize/reword to making sense ◦ Unintentional plagiarism
- 11. Tools for searching (for now!) ◦ EBSCOHost ◦ EBL ◦ Google Scholar ◦ Library Catalogue ◦ Search engines ◦ Agency materials ◦ Liaison librarian
- 12. Wikipedia is fine……. BUT…. ◦ It is an ENCYCLOPEDIA ◦ Anyone can write or edit an article ◦ All authors are anonymous ◦ Must be used and evaluated critically ◦ “Google” is much the same
- 13. EBSCOHost EBSCOHOST and ProQuest are academic databases. They include: ◦Journals ◦Newspaper articles ◦Book reviews ◦Images/videos (limited)
- 14. Words ◦ Keywords: Miscarriage, impact, teenager ◦ Synonyms for teenager: young person, adolescent, youth, young adult ◦ Related terms: still born, still birth, impact on partner, clinical spontaneous abortion, first trimester miscarriage, grief
- 15. Concepts Concept 1 Concept 2 Concept 3 smoking depressio n females or or or tobacco mood women or and or and or cigarette s mental health gender or or or nicotine mental illness
- 16. Primary, secondary, tertiary sources 1) Primary: Original, not condensed or evaluated e.g. some journal articles, conference papers, reports E.g.: An assessment tool for grief counselling devised by Kate Darby 2) Secondary: Evaluates, integrates and describes primary sources e.g. newspapers, books, journals E.g.: Evaluating the effectiveness of the Darby grief assessment tool by Jones (2007) 3) Tertiary: List, index and organise primary and secondary sources e.g. text books, bibliographies E.g.: Grief counselling resources: Darby grief assessment tool