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

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.

Final Exam Wednesday-Friday. Make-up will be Monday.

Dont forget you did wonderful if you followed the instructions. 

Reward yourself!

Son of Citation Machine

Provides an interactive tool to help create reference citations for research papers. Includes various print and electronic resources. There are many nuances to how MLA and APA citations are formed. Use this handy interactive tool to help create MLA-style citations of resources.

http://www.citationmachine.net/

Parenthetical Documentation

 

Whenever you take a quote paraphrase or even when you are summarizing someone’s ideas or words you need to cite the source in the bibliography and you need to make a note of it in your text.    

 

In-text citation MLA style means you put the author’s last name and page number in parenthesis at the end of the sentence. 

 

APA style citations in text require more.  You need to put the author’s last name, the year the work was created and the page number.  The title of the document should be abbreviated to the first letters of each word if there is no author or if you have more than one work by that author.

 

Example of MLA: (Jones, 23).

Example of APA: (Jones, 2008, p.23)

 

Evaluating Websites: The Good, The Bad, & the Ugly

S. Beck created an interesting website regarding electronic websites available on the free web.  Remember information in database, directory, gateway, portal, clearing house or repository has been evaluated and mined from the web for quality.  If it’s a free standing website or part of a larger website ask yourself about quality and authenticity of the site.  Documents can be altered; images can be doctored to make something appear different from what it actually is.  Be careful.  Consume web resources wisely.

http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/eval.html

Beck, Susan. The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: or, Why It’s a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources.  1997.  http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/eval.html