Use of Internet forResearch

Yogendra Singhyogi@iitr.ernet.in

1. Conducting Literature Survey

2. Data Collection

3. Finding Data Analysis Tools

4. Technical Writing Guide

5. Disseminate Your Work

Internet is an excellent tool for-

Literature Survey

The Internet provides

- access to a wealth of information on countless topics contributed by people throughout the

world.

- a user has access to a wide variety of services: vast information sources, electronic mail, file transfer, interest group membership, interactive collaboration, multimedia displays, and more.

Literature Survey

- The Internet is not a library in which all its available items are identified and can be retrieved by a single catalog.

- In fact, no one knows how many individual files reside on the Internet.

- The number runs into a few billion and is growing at a rapid pace.

•The Internet is

–a self-publishing medium

–anyone with little or no technical skills and access to a host computer can publish on the Internet.

– Internet sites change over time according to the commitment and inclination of the creator.

Literature Survey

– Some sites demonstrate an expert's knowledge, while others are amateur efforts.

–Some may be updated daily, while others may be outdated.

–As with any information resource, evaluation of what you find on the Internet is important

Literature Survey

Internet Vs Books/Text

•Anyone can publish a Web page

•No one checks to see if the information is true or false

•There are millions of places to look for information

•Using the Internet is much quicker

•You can narrow down what you’re looking for more easily

•The Internet uses search engines

•Both provide• sources of information

•Both are •viewed by millions of people each day

•A book has to be published by a publishing company

•Editors check and verify the information

•Looking for a book can be more time consuming

•You have to visit a library

•The library uses a classification system

FIND INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET ?

-Go directly to a site if you have the address

- Browse

- Explore a subject directory

- Conduct a search using a Web search engine

- Query a service devoted to digitized - - scholarly materials or books

- Join an e-mail discussion group or Usenet newsgroup / Subscribe to RSS feeds

Browsing

-Haphazard but interesting way of finding desired material on the Internet.

- The creator of a home page programs each link, you never know where these links might lead. - High quality starting pages will contain high quality links.

•Subject directories are created by universities, libraries, companies, organizations, and even volunteers to catalog portions of the Internet.

• Organized by subject and consist of links to Internet resources relating to these subjects.

• The major subject directories available on the Web tend to have overlapping but different databases.

•Most directories provide a search capability that allows you to query the database on your topic of interest.

SUBJECT DIRECTORY

When to use Directories?

Directories are useful for

- general topics,

- for topics that need exploring,

- for in-depth research, and for browsing.

Academic & Professional Directories

•If you want to explore a large number and variety of sources, try ipl2 ( Internet Public Library and Librarians Internet Index.)

• Supported by a federal grant, a large number of Californian librarians select and annotate Web resources across a broad range of topics.

•New sites are added continually, so the directory is up-to-date. With its extensive but careful selection, objective and useful annotations, and hierarchical organization, ipl2 is an excellent choice.

Academic & Professional Directories

Intute is searchable interface to major meta-sites in academic disciplines maintained in Great Britain, including Science, Engineering and Technology, Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and Health and Life Sciences.

INFOMINE is a large directory of Web sites of scholarly interest compiled by the University of California. The directory may be browsed or searched by subject, keyword, or title. Each site listed is accompanied by a description.

WEB SEARCH ENGINE

- An Internet search engine allows the user to enter keywords relating to a topic and retrieve information about Internet sites containing those keywords.

- Search engines located on the Web have become quite popular as the Web itself has become the Internet's environment of choice

THREE STEPS TO FORMULATE QUERIES

1 Identify your concepts When conducting any database search, you need to break down your topic into its component concepts.

2. List keywords for each concept Once you have identified your concepts, you need to list keywords which describe each concept. Some concepts may have only one keyword, while others may have many.

THREE STEPS TO FORMULATE QUERIES

3. Specify the logical relationships among your keywords

Once you know the keywords you want to search, you need to establish the logical relationships among them. The formal name for this is Boolean logic.

Boolean logic allows you to specify the relationships among search terms by using any of three logical operators: AND, OR, NOT.

OR Operator

AND Operator

The Not Operator

TIPS ON CONDUCTING SEARCHES

•Read the directions at each search site.

•The technique for formulating a search depends on the search engine you are using. •There is a wide variety of options available among the different search engines

•If you have a multi-term search, be sure to determine which type of Boolean logic you should use.

TIPS ON CONDUCTING SEARCHES

For example a search query

Use of Balanced Scorecard in Higher Education (exclude use in industry) may be formulated as

Balanced Scorecard +((Higher education OR Universit*) NOT (Industr*))

TIPS ON CONDUCTING SEARCHES

-Include synonyms or alternate spellings in your search statements and connect these terms with OR logic. -Check your spelling

-Take advantage of capitalization if the search engine is case sensitive

-Try different sources to diversify your results. Sources can include other search engines and large directories

-Experiment with different search engines. No two search engines work from the same index.

•Go to Field search

•Add concept words to your original search. •Use vocabulary that is specific to your topic; avoid words with large concepts unless you intend to field search.

•Link appropriate terms with the Boolean AND ( + ) so that each term is required to appear in the record. While many search engines do not require this, it doesn't hurt to be on the safe side.

Too many results or non-relevant results

Too Few Results Drop off the least important concept(s) to broaden

your subject

Use more general vocabulary

Add alternate terms or spellings for individual concepts and connect with the Boolean OR

Try the option available on some engines to find similar or related documents to one or more of your relevant hits.

Information Sources-

Primary Sources -Such as Journals, Theses, Patents, standards etc.

Secondary Sources

- Such as Books, Encyclopaedia, Handbooks, Abstracts, Indexes etc.

Starting your search from Library Sources

Always start from a secondary sources

From Encyclopedia to gain broad knowledgeFrom abstracting/indexing sources such as Ebsco , ABI Inform , Inspec, etc go the primary sources

Citation Indexes such as Web of Science (Science Citation Index) OR Scopus could be better choice

Let us go to our Library

http://mgcl.iitr.ac.in/ http://192.168.125.5/

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