Using the Internet for Research

Angela Benson, Assistant ProfessorUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

April 1, 2004

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Agenda

Finding InformationSearching ResearchingCiting InformationCollecting Data

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Finding Information

What do you want to know Why do you want to know it

How tall was the World Trade Center? What percent of Illinois residents fell below the

poverty level in 2000? Find the text of President Clinton’s censure in

1998. How is breast cancer treated?

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Search Strategy Questions

What do you want to know?What are the key concepts or topics?What keywords define those

concepts/topics? (include synonyms)What is the relationship between the

keywords?How does the search tool you’re using

require you to specify that relationship?

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Searching

Searching Google: http://www.google.com Askjeeves: http://www.askjeeves.com

Evaluating sites Purpose Author, Publisher Intended Audience Perspective Currency Accuracy Links

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Researching

Invisible Web at http://www.invisible-web.net/

UI Library Online at http://www.library.uiuc.edu/index.html

Librarians at http://lii.org/Infomine: http://infomine.ucr.edu/

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Citing Information

Style Guides APA at http://www.apastyle.org/elecsource.html Georgetown at

http://www.library.georgetown.edu/internet/cite.htm Dartmouth at

http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Esources/contents.html

Citation Managers EndNote at http://www.isiresearchsoft.com/ RefWorks at http://www.refworks.com/ Article about the two

http://www.istl.org/02-summer/article4.html

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Citing Information

Plagiarism Using ideas and expressions without citing the

source Why it’s easier on the Web

Copy-and-paste Buying papers online

Identifying it Plagiarism at http://www.plagiarism.org

More information Duke U. at http://

www.lib.duke.edu/libguide/citing.htm

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Collecting Data

Ethical and Legal Aspects of Human Subjects Research in Cyberspace http://www.aaas.org/spp/sfrl/projects/intres/main.htm

Surveys Web Online Surveys at http://web-online-surveys.com/ Survey Monkey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/

Interviews, Focus groups, Journals Blogger at http://www.blogger.com My blog at http://bensonuiuc.blogspot.com/ Email, bulletin board, mailing lists

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Tutorials for further study

Berkeley at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/FindInfo.html

Albany at http://library.albany.edu/internet/