| Evaluate Your Information
Scholarly versus
popular
Faculty often tell students to use scholarly
(or academic) sources rather than popular ones. This distinction
applies most often to the use of articles found in periodicals (magazines).
Scholarly articles are generally:
- Written by researchers and scholars in an
academic field.
- Peer-reviewed (evaluated by outside experts for
quality before being accepted for publication).
- Report original research and scholarship (results
of original inquiry).
- Lengthy, written in specialized language for other
scholars, well footnoted, and include a bibliography of sources.
- Serious in appearance; mostly text plus charts
and graphs, few glossy photos or illustrations.
Popular articles are generally:
- Written by reporters or magazine staff; the author
may not even be listed.
- Chosen for publication by an editor or board of
the magazine.
- Provide general information or entertainment;
report on ideas originating elsewhere.
- Are typically brief; rarely cite sources; are
written for the general public or interested non-specialist in
simple language.
- Have an eye-catching appearance; often well illustrated;
the publication usually contains lots of advertisements.
Many of the same distinctions apply to books. The
author’s credentials, the writing style, the presence (or
lack) of footnotes, and the type of publisher (university press
or mass-market publishing house) should all be looked at as part
of the evaluation of the quality of a particular book.
Print versus online
Many sources which were previously available
only in print format are now also available electronically. In some
cases, the print version has been discontinued and completely replaced
by an online version. This is particularly true of databases (indexes)
for locating journal articles. Those resources linked to the library
web page have been chosen for their value to the curriculum. You
will still need to evaluate the results of your searches, but the
resources are provided through library subscriptions because of
the value of the content to the campus community.
Sites which are freely available over the web, such
as those found by a search in Google or Yahoo, require thorough
evaluation because the quality of the content can vary so widely.
Things to keep in mind regarding web sites include:
- Purpose of the site – Who
is the audience for the information provided? Web sites can exist
for an educational purpose, for recreational or entertainment
reasons, to promote a cause, to sell a product, or simply to make
information available to the public. The purpose of the site should
be kept in mind when considering the information the site provides.
- Sponsorship or authority of the site
– those sites with a .com designation
are commercial, often developed by companies with a product to
sell or set of ideas to promote. Sites with a .edu suffix are
sponsored by educational institutions, often universities. Sites
designated .org are usually hosted by non-profit organizations
and may promote a specific cause or agenda as well as providing
information. Sites sponsored by agencies of government at various
levels are designated . gov.
- Timeliness / currency –
Many web sites indicate the date created as
well as the date of the latest revision. Be sure links from within
the site are active and up to date.
- Audience – Sites
on the web may be aimed at a broad popular audience
or a small group of fellow scholars or followers of a particular
cause. Be sure to consider any assumptions or worldview which
may underlie the information available on the site.
- Coverage – A
site may treat a topic in depth or provide just an overview. It
may contain the text of original documents or just summaries.
Finally, the site may provide links to related material.
A selection
of sources on the Web to help in evaluating Internet information:
Primary versus secondary
Sometimes faculty recommend or require the use
of primary sources. These are original documents related to an event
or topic, including diaries and personal eyewitness accounts, interviews,
speeches, creative and artistic works, and first-hand reports of events
such as newspaper articles.
Example: A Heritage of Woe: the Civil War Diary of
Grace Brown Elmore. Secondary sources analyze
and comment on primary sources. These may include books or articles
written by scholars who interpret past events or synthesize previous
research.
Example:To Bind Up the Wounds: Catholic Sister
Nurses in the U.S. Civil War.
Both types of sources can be valuable in the sense
that original data can be both examined and interpreted later by
scholars and researchers.
Quality versus quantity
A common problem, whether searching the catalog
for books or a database for articles, is finding entirely too many
items on the topic. If the list retrieved is large, many items may
seem irrelevant or at least of limited usefulness. There are some
techniques that can be used to retrieve a smaller number of more useful
items. Many resources, particularly databases
for journal articles, allow you to combine topics instead of just
searching for a single word or phrase. This process, referred to
as “Boolean” searching, generally uses the word “and”
to link topics together and indicate that you want items containing
both terms or topics. EX. Multicultural education and middle schools.
This combination will produce a much smaller list of items than
simply searching multicultural education, but the items retrieved
will all relate to the desired grade level.
A common cause of finding “too much stuff”
even if a Boolean search is done is that databases generally search
by keyword. In the case of journal articles, terms are searched
as they appear in the article titles, the list of subject headings
assigned to the article, and in the abstract (summary) as well.
Often words appear in the abstract which are only marginally relevant
to the real content of the article.
There are several options for getting results that
are more relevant and focused on the topic at hand:
- Some databases have relevancy ranking options for
the results. (Generally results are presented in chronological
order.)
- Most databases have a controlled vocabulary which
allows searching by descriptor, the subject headings assigned
to the article according to its content. There is usually a thesaurus,
either print or online, of that vocabulary.
- Searching only for words that appear in the titles
or articles can help cut the volume of results down. Some useful
articles may be missed, but those retrieved should be very relevant
to the topic at hand.
- Limiting to peer-reviewed journals and excluding
popular magazines can also be a useful approach.
If you are not finding what you need, get in
touch with one of the reference librarians by coming to the reference
desk on the second floor of the library, calling the desk at 206-296-6230,
or sending an email question to libref@seattleu.edu.
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