Using Academic Search Premier Aimed at High School Students By Dan Pfeifer.

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Using Academic Search Premier Aimed at High School Students By Dan Pfeifer

Transcript of Using Academic Search Premier Aimed at High School Students By Dan Pfeifer.

Page 1: Using Academic Search Premier Aimed at High School Students By Dan Pfeifer.

Using Academic Search Premier

Aimed at High School Students

By Dan Pfeifer

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This is Johnny Clipart. He has decided to do his research paper on the

constitutional ideas of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was a president

right?

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Because Johnny is getting ready for college, this assignment requires

the use of academic journals

Academic journals…I assume those are

on twitter

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So, what’s an Academic Journal, you ask?

• It’s a collection of scholarly peer reviewed articles written by experts.

I literally don’t know what any of those words

mean

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• Scholarly – each fact or opinion is documented by an exact source

• Peer Reviewed – the article is looked over by a group of experts before it is published

• Experts – people who have first hand experience with the subjects like professors or graduate students.

• Non-experts include journalists, staff writers, correspondents, or some guy writing blog posts. Journalists might seem like experts, but they are really just summarizing and explaining the work of others. So, a journalist would be an expert on being a journalist, but not on cancer research.

DEFINITIONS ALERT!

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So where do I find these so called “Academic Journals?”

• Academic Journals are usually found in academic databases – a collection of information used for research and writing.

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Databases…that sounds complicated. Why can’t I just use Google?

• Well, internet searching is good for some things in school:

Like answering quick questions

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Giving us general background information

Wait…who was Abraham Lincoln again?

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And providing important up to date information that is too current to find in other places

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Ohhh, and duh…it’s really fast and easy to use

Can we cut that down to 0.5 seconds?

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But for other things, the ole internet, isn’t so great

For one, there’s just so much information out there, it’s impossible to get through it all. And a lot of what comes up during a search is irrelevant, a duplicate, or just plain junk

I can’t read more than 78 million

results in one sitting

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And much of what’s out there could have been written by anyone

But History.com Staff is one of my favorite writers

Mysterious Author Alert!

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In addition, information can be published by anyone.

Angelfire: providing dubious internet content since 1986

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Finally, some information is opinionated or biased, which means the person who wrote it, isn't’ necessarily

basing their conclusions on fact

Worse than Millard Fillmore? Really? C’mon.

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OK. I get it. The internet is an apocalyptic wasteland filled

with biased nuts venting their slanted opinions on

Angelfire hosted discussion boards.

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Not entirely, there’s good stuff on the internet too, but it takes work to find.

Like using advanced features to search by domain name.

Work?

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Using special internet search engines like Google Scholar

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Or using select websites that are created, or reviewed by experts

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Ok I’m convinced, finding good stuff on the internet isn’t as

easy as I thought. But what’s so good about

these so called databases?

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Glad you asked. First we’re going to log onto Academic Search Premier and see some of the

advantages databases offer

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Then we’ll type our subject into the search bar Advantage 1: More

manageable number of results

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Advantage 2: Results come from scholarly and peer reviewed journals, rather than just anybody

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Advantage 3: You can also limit by type and even subject to get more specific results

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Advantage 4: It’s easy to determine who published the information. Databases only deal with reliable and trustworthy publishers and most information was originally in print. So, you

don’t have to ask yourself :“Is this a good source?” If it’s in a database—it almost always IS a good source.

Are you saying anonymous Facebook

posts aren’t reliable?

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Got it? Now Let’s try searchingFirst we’ll go back to our results…

28,000 still seems like

a lot

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Next we’ll refine our results using the advanced features

By clicking on Peer Reviewed

And Academic Journals

Because I was paying attention,

I remember those terms

from slides 4 & 5

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Now our search results are more refined

4,834…still seems like a

lot

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Next we can use Boolean search techniques to further refine our subject

Again. I have no idea what you’re saying to me.

Boolean searching is just a way to use a few key words (or operators)—like AND or OR—to limit and refine search results.

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Examples of Boolean Searching

Using the term AND tells the search engine must include both “Abraham Lincoln” and “constitution”

This makes our number of results go down.

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We can add more “AND’s” to get even more refined results

Now our results our even lower

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Just make sure the keywords being used are relevant

I’m extremely interested in this article

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We also can use the Boolean term “OR” to expand our results

Abraham Lincoln AND Constitution AND (Slavery OR Emancipation)This search was for:

The search engine is being told that the results must contain: Abraham Lincoln, Constitution and either Slavery or Emancipation

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Other Boolean “tricks” include:

• Putting “quotes” around your search terms. This means the exact term, in the exact order, has to be found in the page

• Using a “-” or the phrase NOT will tell the engine eliminate results that contain that phrase. For example: Abraham Lincoln AND Constitution NOT tacos

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Now that you know how to effectively use databases, all that’s left is the actual reading.

Wait what?

Sorry, you have to do that on your own

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Bibliography• Jerz, Dennis G. "Academic Journals: What Are They?" Jerzs Literacy

Weblog. Seton Hill University, n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2015. <http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/academic1/journals/>.

• Library Research Education Program | Yale University Library. Yale University Library, n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2015. <https://www.library.yale.edu/researcheducation/pdfs/Searching_Evaluating_Resources.pdf>.