Finding Quality Information on the Internet

1. WISER Social Sciences: Finding Quality Information on the Internet Angela Carritt and Penny SchenkBodleian Law Library

2. Search engines advantages broad reach, everything on the web that has been indexed or “crawled” Lets you to pinpoint an exact phrase or concept disadvantages brings back too much information, if searches are not limited sources may not be authoritative Web directories and gateways advantages quality control Makes browsing in a topic area easier disadvantages does not encompass everything, you might miss good material may not be current focus/emphasis may not be what you want Two different approaches:

3. Search engines • Google Blog Search • Google Scholar • Clusty • Metacrawler

4. The Google family

5. Advanced Scholar Search gives you more control over your search terms • Scholar Preferences • Library links – allows Google to link to full text within Oxford subscriptions • Bibliographic manager – allows you to set defaults for exporting to Endnote, RefWorks etc

7. Link to abstract or full text Find other versions in the group e.g. related pre-print, article, conference paper Oxford Full Text : checks Oxford databases for full text version Number of times this item (or related items in the same group) has been cited

8. Click here to view article online Print holdings Full text also available through DOI (Digital Object Identifier) Download citation to Endnote, RefWorks or Reference Manager

9. Choose more >> from Google home page See what bloggers are saying on a topic Advanced options allow you to choose specific authors, dates, sites etc. Google Blog Search

10. advanced options search by words contained in posts restrict by words in the blog title can restrict by blogger restrict by date range can restrict by language

11. results

12. alerts based on blog search several options for receiving ongoing updates when search terms are matched in blogs – email alert, gadget on Google homepage, subscription in a feed reader

13. Clusty Sorts results into related “clusters” Useful for zeroing in on what you were looking for and ignoring irrelevant results Can group results by cluster, source or domain

14. clusters on left

15. results sorted by sub-topic

16. preview sites with magnifying glass icon

17. results sorted by source

18. results sorted by domain

19. Metacrawler – use multiple search engines at the same time

20. Top results should be quite targeted since multiple engines returned them

21. Evaluating web resources

22. How reliable is the web page you are looking at?…how much does it matter? Don’t get caught out.

23. Who’s linking to it? Are key web sites web sites? Is it on Intute / other portals that you trust? Is it mentioned in key research guides? • How up to date is it? • Last updated statement • Last event mentioned? • Last article cited? Could it be a hoax? Check Who wrote it? (person / organisation) How knowledgeable are they?(check their facts against what you know) Why did they write it? • Do they belong to an organisation? • Look at the URL of the web page • Do they belong to an organisation you trust? • University (.ac.uk, .edu) • Government (.gov) • Pressure group (biased? Reputable/Alarmist?) • BBC? • Who are they? (If its really important do a search on their name) • Library catalogue • Indexing and abstracting service • Google

24. Web directories and gateways

25. A different approach • Selected resources • Fewer results • Better results….depends who selected them! Directories created by subject experts = assurance of high quality / reliable resources • May not include all the relevant resources • May not include the most recent resources • Organised – resources are usually listed by subject / genre etc = can Browse or Search • Can often limityour search to particular document types (e.g. full text journal articles, conference papers, primary materials, blogs…)

26. A few examples • Intute – Gateway created by the UK academic community • InfoMine – Gateway created by a consortium of Universities based around University of California • OpenDOAR – Gateway of papers held in UK repositories • DMOZ – Gateway of resources selected by the web community • Finding specialist gateways for your subject

27. http://www.intute.ac.uk • From the UK academic community • High quality resources selected by academics, subject specialists, librarians

28. Browse options Search across the whole of Intute / broad subjects Allows you to limit your search to particular document types e.g. articles, primary sources, research guides and directories

29. Browsing Intute Each Intute page has a search box allowing you to search within a subject

30. Browsing Intute Each Intute page has a search box. This allows you to search within a subject Link to the resource Link to the full description – includes keywords Add to marked list (for saving, printing etc)

31. Using Filter by…. Filter allows you to limit your search to particular document types (e.g. journal articles, conference papers, research guides)

32. Searching Intute • What are you searching? - the descriptions on Intute (not the web sites Intute lists) • To search the web sites (rather than Intute descriptions) choose “harvester” later

33. Search results on Intute Click here to see results returned by the harvester Your results – Records where your keywords are included in the Intute description (does not include results from the harvester).

34. Advanced Search • Allows you to search across subjects • Allows you to limit your search to particular document types - Use “Resource Guides and Directories” to find specialist gateways

35. My Intute • Receive e-mail alerts for new resources in your chosen subject area • Save records on Intute • Save searches

36. http://infomine.ucr.edu/ • Resources collected by consortium of US libraries • US bias • Expert resources / Resources gathered by “robot” • Includes free and subscription resources – Oxford has subscriptions to many of the “pay for” resources

37. Infomine Get RSS feed when new resources are added Read the Infomine blog Searches across Infomine Advanced search allows you to search across several topics and to limit your search by field

38. Infomine - Searching • Expert created - resources selected by subject expert • Expert + Robot also includes resources gathered automatically (less quality control) Note “full text” field looks at the text of home and top level pages only • Free / Fee based. Many of the fee based (subscription resources) are available to Oxford users via Oxlip Document types

39. InfoMine results screen Opportunity to include/exclude robot selected sites and/or fee based resources Mortar board – shows resources selected by an “expert” Longer description including keywords / subject headings.

40. More info… Library of Congress Subject Headings / Keywords - click to see all resources using the same keyword

41. Browsing InfoMine • Browse options • Subject – Library of Congress Subject Headings • Keywords • To find resources by subject check both subject and keywords

42. Browsing InfoMine Choose the correct part of the alphabet

43. http://www.opendoar.org/ • Directory of academic institutional repositories • What is an “academic institutional repository?” • Collection of documents created by members of a University • Usually pre-publications drafts, working papers, conference papers, theses.. • OpenDOAR allows you to search for papers held in academic repositories around the World • It will only find scholarly papers • Good assurance of quality

44. OpenDOAR Search for papers and other documents

45. Searching OpenDOAR • Searches the full text of all papers • Truncation / wild cards don’t work very well

46. Results…

47. http://www.dmoz.org/ • Web directory created by web users • To contribute content users must be able to demonstrate subject knowledge

48. Dmoz homepage

49. Browsing DMOZ

50. Browsing Dmoz