Update to this blog!

I have made the decision to return to school. I am working on a Doctorate in Information and Computer Science. After careful consideration, at this time, I think it is too much to teach and attend school.
I have decided to fulfill my academic obligations. Therefore, I will take some time off teaching. I hope to return to soon. I want to remind you, my students, that I will still be available via this site. If you need anything, letters of reference or contact info please let me know. I hope to return to teaching. You have all taught me so much and I am grateful.
I welcome this new stage, and all its challenges. Yet, I hold my experiences at ASA as very treasured ones.
I will continue contributing to this blog although, it will mostly be related to doctoral level research.
Try and smile even as this post is some sort of goodbye.
Take great care!

Review for Final Exam

The final exam will be open book and notes.

It will be held during your regularly scheduled class time on either
Wednesday January 21, 2009
Thursday January 22, 2009 or
Friday January 23, 2009

The exam will be two parts. Part one will be fill in the blank (10 questions).
Part two will be short answer. You will answer five questions in one to two sentences.

Attached to this post is the review sheet.

Any absent students will have to reschedule a time with me (requests should be made in writing).

Good luck!

LIB 100: Information Literacy

Professor Jaszczerski

Fall 2008

ASA:  The College for Excellence

Final Exam Review Sheet

 

Know the definitions for the following terms

·        Thesis

·        Controlled Vocabulary

·        Citation

·        Parenthetical Citation

·        Keyword

·        Bibliography

·        Copyright

·        Plagiarism

·        Boolean Operators

·        MLA

·        APA

·        Hidden Web

 

 

 

 

Be prepared to answer the following questions in one or two sentences.

 

 

How would you feel if someone else were to present your intellectual creations as their own?  Write down your feelings.

 

 

What are some ways you can avoid plagiarism?

 

 

 

What sources of information will you need to be able to locate, access, retrieve now that you have completed this course?

 

 

 

 

What databases will you use when you leave ASA?

 

 

 

 

 

What are some tools you can use to create a bibliography or works cited page?

 

 

 

 

 

Hidden deep or invisible web

The hidden or deep web are portals, databases, directories, clearinghouses and gateways that are not available via regular search engines. Most of the Web is not searchable. If you add gateway, portal, directory, or clearinghouse at the end of your search you will be using the deep web.

Also search engines such as; Academic Info, Infomine, and Librarians Index to the Internet will also provide you with capabilities to search the hidden web. These searches are longer and require 5-10 minutes of processing time. Be prepared to wait.

 

 

Recommended General Subject Directories: Table of Features

Web Directories	Librarians’ Internet Index www.lii.org	Infomine infomine.ucr.edu	About.com www.about.com	Google Directory directory.google.com	Yahoo! dir.yahoo.com
Size, type	Over 20,000. Compiled by public librarians. Highest quality sites only.	Over 125,000. Great, reliable annotations. Compiled by academic librarians from the University of California and elsewhere.	Over 2 million. Generally good annotations done by “Guides” with various levels of expertise.	About 5 million. Selected by the Open Directory Project and enhanced by Google searching and ranking.	About 4 million. Very short descriptions
Phrase searching (what’s this?)	Yes. Use ” ”	Yes. Use ” “ |term term| requires exact match	Yes. Use ” ”	Yes. Use ” ”	Yes. Use ” ”
Boolean logic (what’s this?)	AND implied between words. Also accepts OR and NOT, and (  ).	AND implied between words. Also accepts OR, NOT, and (  ).	No.	OR, capitalized, as in Google’s web search engine.	Yes, as in Yahoo! Search web search engine.
Field searching	Advanced Search allows Boolean searching within subject, titles, description, parts of URLs, and more.	Select options under search box to limit to Author, Title, Subject, Keyword, Description, various subject categories, and more.	No.	Same as in Google’s web search engine.	As in Yahoo! Search web search engine.

 

Subject Directories.  2008.  UC Berkeley Library.  Accessed on 7 Jan 2009. http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/SubjDirectories.html

2008 Lab: Das Kapital

Here is an e-book featured in this years lab.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Das_Kapital

Database Searching

Databases are large banks of quality information stored for subscribers.  Databases are costly some charge millions of dollars for a subscription.  Therefore, individuals do not have subscriptions, instead libraries foot the bill.  At a university, or any library there is access via the library website. 

 

Although there are some databases on the free web, most are reached via a library web portal.  There are some basic ways to use databases:

 

Keywords: are literally “key” words in the text.  They include author, title, content notes and other important words from the text.  A key word is free-text that means you type the words in yourself.

 

Subject:  A subject is an assigned phrase or word to a particular topic.  It is an authoritative listing. Usually you click on subject headings. These subjects hold indexed articles so you know they are good if they have been indexed and put into a subject.  You can always ask your librarian for the various subject headings for your topic.

 

Boolean Operators:  AND, OR, NOT are used in database searching to help narrow and refine your searching.  You create a list of keywords based on your thesis topic.  Then you search the combinations using the operators.  For example; homeschooling as a keyword will get you all the articles in a given database that are about the topic.  Now imagine how different the results would be if you used homeschooling and kindergarten.  Can you think of ways that the OR and NOT operators work?

 

Database design: Almost all databases have citation generating programs. Usually you must perform a search.  Mark your items then e-mail them to yourselves.  In the e-mail window you can select to use APA or MLA in your mailbox,  the citation will be listed according to what you selected.

 

Database interface:

Most databases have a portal page where you can select from numerous collections.  There are also usually a lot of tabs once you search a subject or keyword.  The tabs tell you the different types of material they have on your topic.

 

Databases always offer quality information that has been written by experts.  The collections reflect quality and accuracy, which is why they are considered scholarly sources.   

Semester Project

 

The Semester Project is worth   20% of your total grade.

The student will take any research assignment, which is assigned in another class and work on it for the assignments in this course.  If the student is not assigned a research project from another class, the student will create one to use for the purposes of the exercises in this course.  The student will have it approved by the instructor.  The student will submit:

 

• The topic sentence or thesis, clear and correct.
•  A written description of how the sources in the bibliography were found.
• A three item bibliography following MLA or APA style.

 

rubric_fall_2008

Thesis Statement

Thesis Statements

·         What are Thesis Statements?

ü      A thesis statement is a single, complete sentence used to formulate the topic and give the point of view of the author.  The author is you.

 

·         What should Thesis Statements do?

ü      Almost all assignments can be reduced to a single question.  A thesis statement should answer a question.  You formulate a question about your research and answer it in the thesis. 

o       You are given the topic: Computers in Society. 

o       You want to make a question related to the topic.  You decide on the question: How do computers affect people’s lives in society?

o       The thesis answers the question: “The computer plays an important role in society by affecting our work and our leisure time.”  The rest of the paper should elaborate on the answer.

ü      A thesis statement helps you to:

o       Better organize and develop your ideas.

o       Provide your reader with a summary of your argument.

ü      A good thesis statement:

o       Takes a stand and can be disagreed with.

o       Deals with a subject that can be adequately treated within the framework of the assignment.

o       Express one main idea.

o       Give your own conclusions on a topic.

 

·         Problems with Some Thesis Statements

ü      Some thesis statements are too broad.  That means that there is too much.

o       For instance, the thesis statement: “Computers in society affect peoples’ lives.” cannot be reasonably disagreed with.  There is also not enough detail.  You want to ask yourself: what about peoples’ lives are affected?

ü      Some thesis statements are too narrow.  That means that there is not enough. 

o       For instance, the thesis statement: “Computers in society affect peoples’ gaming experiences.” while valid, it is probably too specific for your class.

ü      Some thesis statements don’t say anything of substance. 

o       For instance: “There are positive and negative aspects of computers in society.” doesn’t say much at all.  You need to elaborate.  You need to be more specific.

ü      Some thesis statements give more than one idea.

o       For instance: “Computers in society affect peoples’ work and leisure and affect peoples’ gaming experiences.” gives two ideas.  You’re saying too much.  It’s not manageable.  It should give only one idea.

Bias, Objectivity, Adverts and Propaganda

This week we focused on advertisement analysis and media bias.  We discussed bias in terms of two newspaper  articles from different papers covering the same topic. We selected these articles  from the databases Lexis/Nexis Academic and Infortrac Custom Newspapers.  We were able to limit our search by day and we were able to select newspapers as well.  We discussed what media bias is and what scholarly research aims for new also talked about point of view and the anti-thesis.  The goal is for your scholarly research to be unbiased.  You do this by objectively researching information that will support your hypothesis.  Also, by balancing your paper with both primary and secondary sources of information you are creating a document that is relevant and timely.  It is important to use only scholarly sources.  We reviewed some databases that provide full text to thousands of scholarly journals.  Finally, we evaluated several ads from various magazines and interpreted them.  We discussed propaganda and its relationship to advertising. 

 

Next week we will begin to formulate and learn about thesis statements and their purpose in research. 

Media Bias and Ownership

This week we learn about biased and unbiased information.  Max Weber coined the term objectivity (unbias) and much of his work was based on looking at things from a value-free perspective.

Weber is often quoted for ”don’t go dancing on Sunday” and is the author of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

How does ownership impact the objectivity of the media.  The link here should give you questions about whose loyalty and best interests the media serves.  Is it to serve the general public or the interests of the few and wealthy, those who “owns the means of production”?”