according to Pew Research Center, 68 percent of American adults get their news from social media—platforms where opinion is often presented as fact.
results of the international test revealed that only 14 percent of U.S. students were able to reliably distinguish between fact and opinion.
News and Media Literacy (and the lack of) is not very different from Information Literacy
An “information literate” student is able to “locate, evaluate, and effectively use information from diverse sources.” See more About Information Literacy
Developing Your Research Topic/Question
Research always starts with a question. But the success of your research also depends on how you formulate that question. If your topic is too broad or too narrow, you may have trouble finding information when you search. When developing your question/topic, consider the following:
Is my question one that is likely to have been researched and for which data have been published? Believe it or not, not every topic has been researched and/or published in the literature.
Be flexible. Consider broadening or narrowing the topic if you are getting a limited number or an overwhelming number of results when you search. In nursing it can be helpful to narrow by thinking about a specific population (gender, age, disease or condition, etc.), intervention, or outcome.
Discuss your topic with your professor and be willing to alter your topic according to the guidance you receive.
Getting Ready for Research
Library Resources vs. the Internet
How (where from) do you receive information about your professional interests?
Advantages/disadvantages of using Web Resources
Become a member of professional organizations and use their online information
Use the SCSU library page to online databases
Building Your List of Keywords
Why Keyword Searching?
Why not just type in a phrase or sentence like you do in Google or Yahoo!?
Because most electronic databases store and retrieve information differently than Internet search engines.
A databases searches fields within a collection of records. These fields include the information commonly found in a citation plus an abstract (if available) and subject headings. Search engines search web content which is typically the full text of sources.
The bottom line: you get better results in a database by using effective keyword search strategies.
To develop an effective search strategy, you need to:
determine the key concepts in your topic and
develop a good list of keyword synonyms.
Why use synonyms?
Because there is more than one way to express a concept or idea. You don’t know if the article you’re looking for uses the same expression for a key concept that you are using.
Consider: Will an author use:
Hypertension or High Blood Pressure?
Teach or Instruct?
Therapy or Treatment?
Don’t get “keyword lock!” Be willing to try a different term as a keyword. If you are having trouble thinking of synonyms, check a thesaurus, dictionary, or reference book for ideas.
Keyword worksheet
Library Resources
How to find the SCSU Library Website
SCSU online databases
SCSU Library Web page
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Test your knowledge:
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Basic Research Skills
Identifying a Scholarly Source
Boolean Operators
Databases
How do you evaluate a source of information to determine if it is appropriate for academic/scholarly use. There is no set “checklist” to complete but below are some criteria to consider when you are evaluating a source.
ACCURACY
Does the author cite reliable sources?
How does the information compare with that in other works on the topic?
Can you determine if the information has gone through peer-review?
Are there factual, spelling, typographical, or grammatical errors?
AUDIENCE
Who do you think the authors are trying to reach?
Is the language, vocabulary, style and tone appropriate for intended audience?
What are the audience demographics? (age, educational level, etc.)
Are the authors targeting a particular group or segment of society?
AUTHORITY
Who wrote the information found in the article or on the site?
What are the author’s credentials/qualifications for this particular topic?
Is the author affiliated with a particular organization or institution?
What does that affiliation suggest about the author?
CURRENCY
Is the content current?
Does the date of the information directly affect the accuracy or usefulness of the information?
OBJECTIVITY/BIAS
What is the author’s or website’s point of view?
Is the point of view subtle or explicit?
Is the information presented as fact or opinion?
If opinion, is the opinion supported by credible data or informed argument?
Is the information one-sided?
Are alternate views represented?
Does the point of view affect how you view the information?
PURPOSE
What is the author’s purpose or objective, to explain, provide new information or news, entertain, persuade or sell?
Does the purpose affect how you view the information presented?
Scholars want peers to find—and cite—their research, and these days that increasingly happens on social media. The old adage ‘publish or perish’ could soon go digital as ‘clicks or canned.’
Several platforms have emerged over the past decade, offering researchers the chance to share their work and connect with other scholars. But some of those services have a bad rap from academics who say commercial sites lack the integrity of institutional repositories run by traditional universities. (Among the most widely-villified are ResearchGate and Academia.edu, which is evident by griping on social media and elsewhere.)
a 2015 paper comparing services and tools offered by various academic social networks, says researchers must weigh the benefits and drawbacks of each. “They can be great tools to advance your research, especially social research,” she says. “But just like with Facebook or any other social network, we need to be aware of potential issues we might have with copyright or privacy.”
Academia.edu is the largest of the academic social networks.
Created as a reference-management tool to help users organize their research, Mendeley also includes a number of social-networking features.
Scholabrate. The service claims to provide a more Facebook-esque, visual experience for academics seeking to network with others in their field.
Similar to Mendeley, Zotero functions primarily as a research tool, allowing users to collect, save, cite and share materials from a wide range of sources. The site also maintains a significant community of academics who can connect through groups and forums, or through their search engine.
metadata: counts of papers by yer, researcher, institution, province, region and country. scientific fields subfields
metadata in one-credit course as a topic:
publisher – suppliers =- Elsevier processes – Scopus Data
h-index: The h-index is an author-level metric that attempts to measure both the productivity and citation impact of the publications of a scientist or scholar. The index is based on the set of the scientist’s most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other publications.
The era of e-science demands new skill sets and competencies of researchers to ensure their work is accessible, discoverable and reusable. Librarians are naturally positioned to assist in this education as part of their liaison and information literacy services.
Research data literacy and the library
Christian Lauersen, University of Copenhagen; Sarah Wright, Cornell University; Anita de Waard, Elsevier
Data Literacy: access, assess, manipulate, summarize and present data
Statistical Literacy: think critically about basic stats in everyday media
Information Literacy: think critically about concepts; read, interpret, evaluate information
data information literacy: the ability to use, understand and manage data. the skills needed through the whole data life cycle.
Shield, Milo. “Information literacy, statistical literacy and data literacy.” I ASSIST Quarterly 28. 2/3 (2004): 6-11.
Carlson, J., Fosmire, M., Miller, C. C., & Nelson, M. S. (2011). Determining data information literacy needs: A study of students and research faculty. Portal: Libraries & the Academy, 11(2), 629-657.
embedded librarianship,
Courses developed: NTRESS 6600 research data management seminar. six sessions, one-credit mini course
NEW ROLESFOR LIbRARIANS: DATAMANAgEMENTAND CURATION
the capacity to manage and curate research data has not kept pace with the ability to produce them (Hey & Hey, 2006). In recognition of this gap, the NSF and other funding agencies are now mandating that every grant proposal must include a DMP (NSF, 2010). These mandates highlight the benefits of producing well-described data that can be shared, understood, and reused by oth-ers, but they generally offer little in the way of guidance or instruction on how to address the inherent issues and challenges researchers face in complying. Even with increasing expecta-tions from funding agencies and research com-munities, such as the announcement by the White House for all federal funding agencies to better share research data (Holdren, 2013), the lack of data curation services tailored for the “small sciences,” the single investigators or small labs that typically comprise science prac-tice at universities, has been identified as a bar-rier in making research data more widely avail-able (Cragin, Palmer, Carlson, & Witt, 2010).Academic libraries, which support the re-search and teaching activities of their home institutions, are recognizing the need to de-velop services and resources in support of the evolving demands of the information age. The curation of research data is an area that librar-ians are well suited to address, and a num-ber of academic libraries are taking action to build capacity in this area (Soehner, Steeves, & Ward, 2010)
REIMAgININg AN ExISTINg ROLEOF LIbRARIANS: TEAChINg INFORMATION LITERACY SkILLS
By combining the use-based standards of information literacy with skill development across the whole data life cycle, we sought to support the practices of science by develop-ing a DIL curriculum and providing training for higher education students and research-ers. We increased ca-pacity and enabled comparative work by involving several insti-tutions in developing instruction in DIL. Finally, we grounded the instruction in the real-world needs as articu-lated by active researchers and their students from a variety of fields
Chapter 1 The development of the 12 DIL competencies is explained, and a brief compari-son is performed between DIL and information literacy, as defined by the 2000 ACRL standards.
chapter 2 thinking and approaches toward engaging researchers and students with the 12 competencies, a re-view of the literature on a variety of educational approaches to teaching data management and curation to students, and an articulation of our key assumptions in forming the DIL project.
chapter 4 because these lon-gitudinal data cannot be reproduced, acquiring the skills necessary to work with databases and to handle data entry was described as essential. Interventions took place in a classroom set-ting through a spring 2013 semester one-credit course entitled Managing Data to Facilitate Your Research taught by this DIL team.
chapter 5 embedded librar-ian approach of working with the teaching as-sistants (TAs) to develop tools and resources to teach undergraduate students data management skills as a part of their EPICS experience.
Lack of organization and documentation presents a bar-rier to (a) successfully transferring code to new students who will continue its development, (b) delivering code and other project outputs to the community client, and (c) the center ad-ministration’s ability to understand and evalu-ate the impact on student learning.
skill sessions to deliver instruction to team lead-ers, crafted a rubric for measuring the quality of documenting code and other data, served as critics in student design reviews, and attended student lab sessions to observe and consult on student work
chapter 6 Although the faculty researcher had created formal policies on data management practices for his lab, this case study demonstrated that students’ adherence to these guidelines was limited at best. Similar patterns arose in discus-sions concerning the quality of metadata. This case study addressed a situation in which stu-dents are at least somewhat aware of the need to manage their data;
chapter 7 University of Minnesota team to design and implement a hybrid course to teach DIL com-petencies to graduate students in civil engi-neering.
stu-dents’ abilities to understand and track issues affecting the quality of the data, the transfer of data from their custody to the custody of the lab upon graduation, and the steps neces-sary to maintain the value and utility of the data over time.
The report gives detailed data on the use of various bibliometric and altmetric tools such as Google Scholar, Web of Science, Scimago, Plum Analytics
20 predominantly research universities in the USA, continental Europe, the UK, Canada and Australia/New Zealand. Among the survey participants are: Carnegie Mellon, Cambridge University, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya the University at Albany, the University of Melbourne, Florida State University, the University of Alberta and Victoria University of Wellington
ResearcherID provides a solution to the author ambiguity problem within the scholarly research community. Each member is assigned a unique identifier to enable researchers to manage their publication lists, track their times cited counts and h-index, identify potential collaborators and avoid author misidentification. In addition, your ResearcherID information integrates with the Web of Science and is ORCID compliant, allowing you to claim and showcase your publications from a single one account. Search the registry to find collaborators, review publication lists and explore how research is used around the world!
– Just 5% of those surveyed use Facebook Insights in their altmetrics efforts.
