Blog - Research

I've been looking for a better system of compiling the research I do for blog posts and other projects.

Storing my links, photos, text and citations for these projects on a hard drive long ago ceased to be practical, as I do much of my reading on my mobile phone, but most of my writing on my laptop.  I needed portable storage that I can access from anywhere.  Thumb drives are just one more thing to carry, store, and try not to damage, (and they don't work on my mobile phone, so web-based storage is a must.  I've tried several systems, but haven't really been happy with any of them.  I finally gave up a while back, and just started storing this information in a web-based e-mail account set up for this purpose. 

Finally,  today I found an application called Evernote, and I really like it.  It functions like e-mail storage and threading, but is much easier to categorize and tag.  Photos, web clips, links, audio messages, and text.  The files are called "notes," and these notes can be for shared or individual use.  I also downloaded the "web clipper" for my browsers and I can just right-click on any web page and store the link and/or the page in my notes for quoting later. 

It's very user-friendly to download and use - from the website or from the wireless provider's app market.  The app works as a plug-in, rather than a tool-bar, so it doesn't take up any valuable space on smaller screens.  So far, there isn't anything that I DON'T like about this program. 

All notes can be tagged, so that when it's time to begin writing on a topic, I need only to pull from the notes on that tag.  It's great.  If you would like give it a try, visit Evernote.com.  There is a premium version available, but the free version is great.

When it comes to believing what you read online, I see a lot of levels of trust.  Some of older folks in my life (by "older" I mean older than me), remind me constantly that ANYONE can put ANYTHING  they want online, so therefore none of it should be taken at face value.  Some of these folks believe this so strongly they've decided that having a computer in their home is really not necessary.

Sigh.

On the other extreme, I run into people far more often than I'm comfortable with, who will believe ANYTHING they see on the web, if it shows up on the front page of Google, or, especially, if it is forwarded them in an e-mail from a friend. 

Bigger sigh.

Reason prevails somewhere between these two groups of people.  It is true that just about anyone can write just about anything and stick it on the web - and that we really shouldn't take any of it at face value if we're researching for information.  However, the vast majority of the world's information is now online, so it doesn't make sense to categorically reject ALL of it.  There's a lot of good stuff here, if you know what to look for.  Here are a few guidelines:

1) An "expert" in any field should only be considered a primary resource if that expert can be verified to be such in a "real world" source.  If the profile exists only online, be careful.  Of course, this person may be using a pseudonym for privacy or security reasons, and may, indeed know what he or she is talking about, but spend some time fact-checking before quoting them as a primary source.

2) If it sounds too good to be true - it probably is.  Some things never change.

3) The rules for peer reviewed research are pretty much the same online and offline, although the method of documentation is sometimes different.  Online, references are usually shown in the form of links, rather than footnotes or endnotes, but the links should be to reputable sources.

Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking. 
 

Those interested in researching World History online might find this web resource very useful.  It's great for finding digital copies of documents, pictures, maps, and art going all the way back to 8000 B.C.   Take a look at WDL.org, the World Digital Library.

It's a developing resource, and right now there are (only) 1,350 items, but the format is great, and the concept really has potential, especially considering all of the world-renown archives that have partnered with the site. It's promises to be at the international level what the Library of Congress has become to the United States.

From the about pages:

The WDL makes it possible to discover, study, and enjoy cultural treasures from around the world on one site, in a variety of ways. These cultural treasures include, but are not limited to, manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings.

Items on the WDL may easily be browsed by place, time, topic, type of item, and contributing institution, or can be located by an open-ended search, in several languages. Special features include interactive geographic clusters, a timeline, advanced image-viewing and interpretive capabilities. Item-level descriptions and interviews with curators about featured items provide additional information.

Navigation tools and content descriptions are provided in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Many more languages are represented in the actual books, manuscripts, maps, photographs, and other primary materials, which are provided in their original languages.

The WDL was developed by a team at the U.S. Library of Congress, with contributions by partner institutions in many countries; the support of the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); and the financial support of a number of companies and private foundations.

 To navigate the site, simply go to WDL.org and choose the approximate time you want to search on the slider bar at the bottom of the world map.  Then, click on the continent.  A library will pop-up, and you can choose from the available selections.  The archive is being translated into many languages, and the navigation is very intuitive and picture-based, so that people with very basic reading and language skills can benefit from the site.  There are also other search and sort options at the top of the page, to help you find what you're looking for. 

A look at the funding page is interesting...the motivation for some of the donors seems to be the promotion of their own culture and history (e.g. The Bridges of Understanding Foundation for the development of Middle East-related content for inclusion in the WDL). And then, of course, there's Google.

Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking. 
 

Two different times in the recent past I have needed to recover a deleted or modified blog post.  These weren't my own blog posts, of course, as those can usually be recovered or restored internally .  These were posts on OTHER blogs or websites that had been taken down for one reason or another, but were needed for documentation. 

Depending on the site's page rank, and how often the search engines update their cache for that particular website (more popular sites tend to be updated more frequently), a cached page can remain on the search engine for days or weeks. A cached page is a "copy" of a page that has been deleted or modified blog post.

You can search for a cached copy of a web page or blog post by entering as much of the title as you can remember as a search term, then clicking on "cached," (in Google and Yahoo) or "cached page,"  (in Bing).  Above is an example in Bing.  Although I use Google as a first resource for many searches these days, I have actually found Bing to be more helpful in recovering cached pages, so remember to check both, if you're looking for something important.

Also see:  What happens online stays online. and Show me the cache. and Law.com: 'Cached' pages may be Evidence...

Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking. 
 

To conclude our series on online research, this week, here are a couple of videos with great ideas on how to use the search engines and search the databases more effectively:

Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is a trainer and tech writer in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking. Her weakness is the mocha frappuccino.

We're studying online research, this week, and we've talked about researching people, and topical research.  Yesterday, we listed a bunch of tools available to help with online research.  Following are some resources to aid in academic research online:

AERA: The Academic Educational Research Association is an organization dedicated to promoting best practices in educational research.

 

OERI:  The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement is an excellent list of government educational research resources.

 

NoodleTools: From the website: "provides innovative software that teaches students and supports teachers and librarians throughout the entire research process."

 

Zotero: From the website: "Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, cite, and share your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself."

 

ERIC: From the website: "The ERIC mission is to provide a comprehensive, easy-to-use, searchable, Internet-based bibliographic and full-text database of education research and information that also meets the requirements of the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002."

 

Qestia: From the website: "Questia is the first online library that provides 24/7 access to the world's largest online collection of books and journal articles in the humanities and social sciences, plus magazine and newspaper articles. You can search each and every word of all of the books and journal articles in the collection. You can read every title cover to cover. This rich, scholarly content -- selected by professional collection development librarians -- is not available elsewhere on the Internet. Undergraduate, high school, graduate students, and Internet users of all ages have found Questia to be an invaluable online resource. Anyone doing research or just interested in topics that touch on the humanities and social sciences will find titles of interest in Questia..."

 

EBSCO: From the website: "EBSCO is the only company to provide customers with an integrated service that combines reference databases, subscription management, online journals, books, linking services and A-to-Z solutions."

 

Smithsonian: From the website: "Search over 2.3 million records, with 290,000 images, video and sound files from Smithsonian museums, archives, and libraries."

 

Library of Congress:  From the website: "The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, maps and manuscripts in its collections."

 

Internet Public Library: From the website: "ipl2 is a public service organization and a learning/teaching environment. To date, thousands of students and volunteer library and information science professionals have been involved in answering reference questions for our Ask an ipl2 Librarian service and in designing, building, creating and maintaining the ipl2's collections."

 

LIterature.org: From the website: "On this site you will find the full and unabridged texts of classic works of English literature. Fiction from authors like Lewis Carroll, the Bronte sisters (Anne, Charlotte and Emily), Jack London, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens and many others, and classic scientific works from Charles Darwin and Rene Descartes."

 

Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is a trainer and tech writer in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking. Her weakness is the mocha frappuccino.