Transcript General Search Engines - Midlands State University

INFORMATION LITERACY
Defining Information
There is no one definition of information but here are a few:
 Information is knowledge acquired from another.
 Information is knowledge you can convey to others.
 Information is facts communicated or learned.
 Information is data interpreted to be useful.
 Information is facts and figures.
Source - http://www.open.ac.uk/safari/index.php
You can think of other definitions
Formats of Information
 Printed
 Electronic
 Audio Visual
 Oral
Think of more formats
Defining Information Literacy
“. . . people trained in the application of information
resources to their work can be called information
literates. They have learned techniques and skills for
utilizing the wide range of information tools as well as
primary sources for molding information-solutions to
their problems.”
Zurkowski, P. G. 1974. The information service
environment: relationships and priorities. Washington,
D.C.: National Commission on Libraries and Information
Science.
Defining Information Literacy …cont
 The set of skills needed to find, retrieve, analyze,
and use information - American Library
Association
 The ability to locate, understand, evaluate, utilize,
and convey information at home, at work, and in
the community – Herod, L (2002)
 Ability to use information ethically and legally, and
identify, explore, analyze and apply appropriate
information resources to a specific task – Garnsey,
B (2008)
Information Literacy Is About
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Recognizing and defining a need for information
Selecting appropriate resources and developing a search
Critically evaluating results
Recognizing a solution
Acknowledging the use of sources
Information literacy is about using appropriate information
resources, regardless of medium; this may embrace oral, printed,
electronic and other resources
• Information literacy is not about learning to use computers: it is
about the use of Information and Communication Technologies
(ICTs) as a tool of research
These are also the skills possessed by an information literate
person
2. Organization of Information
Purpose of Information
Organization
• To assign a specific location for every document on the
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library shelves.
To collocate items - documents on the same subject are
placed together on the shelves in order to enable users to
find items on the subject in one place.
To provide browsing facilities; i.e. a call number for one
item can lead to other discoveries that are shelved nearby.
To increase the utility of information resources to optimum
level.
To provide a comprehensive view of documents on a
subject
To save the time of successive library users
To create a system out of disorder.
Information Organization in
Libraries
• Libraries use classification schemes to organize
documents
• Classification schemes use call numbers to group
documents into different subjects
• Two main classification schemes used globally are :
1. Library of Congress (LC) – Used at MSU
2. Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC)
Library of Congress Classification
 Is alphanumeric which means it uses both letters of
the alphabet and numerals to organize information
e.g.
HF5415 KOT
Subject
First 3 letters
of author’s
name
3. Reference Sources
 A reference source supplies authoritative information.
 Is intended to be referred to briefly for specific factual
information only, and not to be read from cover to
cover.
Types of Reference Sources
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Encyclopaedias
Dictionaries
Biographies
Directories
Maps
Atlases
Almanacs
Yearbooks
Handbooks
Manuals
Government Publications
4. Periodicals/ Serials Defined
 A periodical is a publication produced at regular
intervals e.g. daily, monthly, quarterly,
annually.
 Any publication issued in successive parts which
are intended to be continued indefinitely. These
publications may be issued in print, non-print,
and or electronic format e.g. newspapers,
magazines, journals
Types of Periodicals/Serials
• Scholarly journals
• Professional Journals
• Popular Magazines
• Newspapers
Can you think of more?
5. The Internet
 This is an international network of computers
 It is a network of networks
What the Internet Offers
 Communication
 Information Resources
 Entertainment
Parts of the Internet
 WWW (A system of hyper linked documents)
 E-mail (Electronic Mail)
 FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
 Instant Messaging Services
 C –U- See –Me (Internet video conferencing)
Can you think of more examples
Consult Carla List’s “Information Research” for more information
Formats of Information Found On
The Internet
 Text
 Audio
 Graphics/Images
 Software
Can You Think of More?
Finding Information On The
Internet
If you know the web site address e.g. www.msu.ac.zw
2. Search Engines e.g. google, Yahoo!
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Web Browsers
 Software used to display information from the
internet
 Usually displays web pages
 Examples of web browsers are:
1. Internet Explorer
2. Google Chrome
3. Safari
4. Mozilla Firefox
Try to find more examples
URLS/URIS or Website Addresses
 URL – Uniform Resource Locator
 URI – Uniform Resource Identifier
 All the above are examples of website addresses
Parts of Website Address
HTTP://WWW.MSU.AC.ZW
This address is for internet
server that uses the hypertext
transfer protocol or http
This website is on the
internet part call the
World Wide Web or
WWW
Site name
Domain name
Examples of Common Domain
Names
 .com – website is a commercial entity
 .edu – educational/academic website
 .ac – educational/academic website
 .org – Professional Organization
 .gov – website belongs to government
There are also country domain names, think of some
Search Engines
These are software programs that search the internet for
specified keywords
Types of Search Engines
 General Search Engines e.g. google, yahoo
 Meta Search Engines e.g. dogpile, metasearch,
metacrawler
 Subject Directories e.g. google directory, yahoo
directory, PINAKES
Find out about more examples
General Search Engines
 Used to search publicly available web pages
 Uses its spider software to crawl the internet and index
new web pages into its database
 User enters keywords to search
 Search engine retrieves keywords
 Search engine lists results in the form of links
Metasearch Engines
 These are search engines that search other search
engines
 They search multiple search engines at once
Subject Directories
 Uses human experts in indexing websites
 Website links usually arranged according to subject
 Information is highly qualitative because subject
directories are compiled by experts in the field
Searching Techniques
There are several methods:
1. Boolean Searching
2. Phrase Searching
3. Truncation and Wildcards
Boolean Searching
 Uses 3 operators AND, OR and NOT
 Can be represented by mathematical symbols
 AND
 OR
 NOT
=+
=/
= - (Minus)
Boolean Searching
Diagram for the AND Operator
Poverty AND Crime
Boolean Searching
Diagram for the OR Operator
College OR University
Boolean Searching
Diagram for the NOT Operator
Cats NOT dogs
Phrase Searching
 Involves putting your search terms in double quotation
marks e.g.
"poverty reduction in africa“
 Search engine will find pages containing the exact
phrase
Using Truncation and Wildcards
 Truncation means to cut off a point or to shorten.
When used with keywords, it means to keep the stem
of the key words and "cut" everything else away,
leaving it out.
 Truncation works with wild cards that come in formats
such as “?”, *, “$” or the “#”
 The most common is the *
Using Truncation and Wildcards
 For example the stem politi*
 Will retrieve political, politician, politics
6. Evaluating websites
 Traditional criteria to be applied:
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Accuracy
Authority
Objectivity
Currency
Coverage
Checklist - Authority
Can you identify the person or organization
responsible for the work?
2. What are the educational qualifications and
experience?
3. Are there any contact details?
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Checklist - Accuracy
 Are sources for factual information available for
verification?
 Can you detect any sort of quality control e.g.
grammar, spelling etc…?
 Are charts, graphs, clearly labeled and easy to read?
Checklist - Objectivity
 Are biases clearly stated?
 Is it easy to distinguish between informational and
advertising content?
Checklist - Currency
Are there dates to indicate:
1. When the page was written?
2. When it was last revised
3. When it was placed on the web
Checklist – Coverage/Scope
 Is there any indication that the page is complete and is
not still under construction?
 If there is a print equivalent to the Web page, is there
clear indication of whether the entire work or only a
portion is available on the Web?
7. Plagiarism - Definition
Intellectual dishonesty expressed as:
1. Using the words, ideas, images or data of someone
else as your own work
2. Producing work which incorporates references that
you have not inspected or read
3. Using the flow of ideas of someone else as your own
work, even if you alter the wording
Plagiarism – Direct Copying
No acknowledgment is given
Original Text
Plagiarized Text
This book has been written against a
background of both reckless optimism
and reckless despair. It holds that
Progress and Doom are two sides of the
same medal; that both are articles of
superstition, not of faith. It was written
out of the conviction that it should be
possible to discover the hidden
mechanics by which all traditional
elements of our political and spiritual
world were dissolved into a
conglomeration where everything seems
to have lost specific value, and has
become unrecognizable for human
comprehension, unusable for human
purpose. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of
Totalitarianism
This book has been written against a
background of both reckless optimism
and reckless despair. It holds that
Progress and Doom are two sides of the
same medal; that both are articles of
superstition, not of faith. Interestingly
enough, Arendt avoids much of the
debates found in some of the less
philosophical literature about
totalitarianism.
Plagairism - The Paraphrase
Original Text
Plagiarized Text
 This book has been written against a
background of both reckless optimism
and reckless despair. It holds that
Progress and Doom are two sides of the
same medal; that both are articles of
superstition, not of faith.1 Interestingly
enough, Arendt avoids much of the
debates found in some of the less
philosophical literature about
totalitarianism. 1 Hannah Arendt, The
Origins of Totalitarianism (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1973
ed.), p.vii, Preface to the First Edition.
 Hannah Arendt’s book, The Origins of
Totalitarianism, was written in the light
of both excessive hope and excessive
pessimism. Her thesis is that both
Advancement and Ruin are merely
different sides of the same coin. Her
book was produced out of a belief that
one can understand the method in
which the more conventional aspects of
politics and philosophy were mixed
together so that they lose their
distinctiveness and become worthless for
human uses.
Even if the author’s exact language is not used, a footnote is
required for material that is paraphrased.
The rule for paraphrasing
1. Cite the source and use quotation marks when quoting directly
2. If citing a quotation or substantive comment in a work with page numbers
or other locators, include these in the citation
References and Further Reading
Web Resources
 https://ilrb.cf.ac.uk/about.html
 http://www.informationliteracy.org.uk
 http://www.open.ac.uk/safari/index.php
 http://infolitglobal.info
References and Further Reading
Books
 Herring, J. (2011) Improving students' web use and information literacy, London :
Facet Publishing
 List, C. (2002) Information Research, Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing
Company