Defining Your Research Topic & Starting Your Search, Page 3

Defining Your Research Topic & Starting Your Search
Lesson 3

Determining Use

What type of information is best to use: print vs. electronic forms of information

With easy access to electronic resources, one can understand why students might think of the research process as beginning and ending with computers. However, there is no "one-stop shopping" when it comes to doing quality research. A good researcher knows how to find information in a wide variety of formats.

Not all information is available in electronic format

Many information sources in academic disciplines are not yet available electronically. In addition, computerized databases have only emerged as a research tool since the 1960's, so the bulk of information in libraries is in a print format, as it has been since the invention of the printing press in 1465. It is inconceivable to believe that all of this historical knowledge will be transcribed into an electronic format.

Advantages and disadvantages of print and electronic formats

Advantages of electronic online searching:

Speed. It can take minutes (sometimes seconds) to search one or more databases while a comparable search in print indexes takes much longer.
Flexibility. You can link words or search terms in a way that can never be done manually, often with better search results.
Variability. Truncating (shortening) terms allows you to search for all the variations of a term. For example, using the truncated term "colleg#" will retrieve "college," "colleges," "collegial," and "collegiate."
More resources. Online searching provides access to many more resources than are available in your library. Books and magazine articles can be requested from databases by using interlibrary loan.
Currency. Online databases are updated more frequently than printed sources.

Disadvantages of electronic online searching:

Volume. You tend to get back an enormous number of search results, particularly if you are searching the Internet. Here is where the importance of formulating a good search strategy becomes essential.
False hits. Any search in an electronic database will frequently result in a number of false matches of your keyword search terms. For example, a search for information on "AIDS" may easily turn up "false" hits such as "study aids" or "visual aids."
No cross references. Perhaps the greatest disadvantage of online searching is the lack of cross references that take the researcher from a poor choice of keywords to terms that will result in a higher rate of success. This is particularly true if you make a typographical error or spell a word wrong. No online database so far will pop in with a spell checker to lead you to the correct spelling. And if you happen to use a misspelled word on the Internet, you will often get hits on the wrong word since the people who wrote the Web pages spelled them wrong in the first place. Try looking up "mathmatics" in the Internet search engine AltaVista, and compare the results with a search for "mathematics." AltaVista will locate information using the misspelled word as well as the properly spelled word. Compare this with the library's online catalog for the same keywords. Your library's catalog will locate material on mathematics only when the proper spelling is used. What important searching principles do you think are demonstrated by this example?

Advantages of print resources:

Cross references. One area where print resources are usually more helpful than online databases is the useful cross references between subject headings. If your topic is broad, the "see also" references will suggest more appropriate headings. If you haven't picked the right subject heading, the "see" references will lead you to the subject heading in actual use.
History. Since many online databases only index articles published after 1980, you will need to use print indexes to locate older articles. If you plan to do research in the humanities, or in history, you will most likely consult information published prior to 1980. For instance, if you wanted to do research on the formative years of rock 'n roll you would want to find magazine articles from that time period. To locate articles on rock 'n roll from the 1950's and 1960's you would consult print magazine indexes like Reader's Guide, or Humanities Index, which were published in the 1950's and 1960's. Most online databases would not be able to help you with this type of research because they only index articles back to the 1980's.

Take time now to try and define your research topic. Print off the Developing a Research Stategy Assignment and see how you do. When you are done press the "Continue" button to proceed Lesson 4: Using & Evaluating Electronic Resources.

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