Once you've selected your topic can you begin your research in interest? Well, yes, you can, but before getting into the mechanics of how to search, you need to understand the different sources and information that are available to you. Hi, my name is Bob Baker. And I’m a library director IPCC's Community Campus. Welcome to the series online tutorials designed to help you become a more knowledgeable information consumer and help you to get better grades. Well, when I was preparing the script for this episode I came across a very interesting tutorial on the web developed at Penn State University Libraries. It's called “The information cycle: how today's events are tomorrow's information”. In the tutorial the authors use the example the Columbine shooting tragedy in 1999 to show how information evolves overtime into different formats. Within hours and even minutes of shooting on April 20th 1999 there was information appearing on TV, the radio and the Internet. The day after the shooting all the country's newspapers described the event devoting extra time with more complete coverage fleshing out some of the details. In the weeks following the tragedy there were numerous articles in the weekly news magazines such as Time and Newsweek that went into still greater depth. Then in the months that followed the first articles in scholarly journals began to appear offering more in-depth analysis. Finally, in the years following Columbine various books were published that put the event in a larger perspective. This information cycle suggests one of the reasons that many instructors insist that students read and cite scholarly literature and books in the research papers. It simply because the information provided in scholarly sources is more likely to provide depth and perspective than you will find in a newspaper or news magazine account. So, now let's look at the different ways information is packaged today. Of course, there's the book. Printed books, glued or sewn pages-bound, with covers have been around in one form or another for many centuries. The publication of books began as a trickle following the invention of a movable type by Gutenberg in the middle of the 15th century. Today it has become a flood with net sales by US publishers exceeding twenty four billion dollars in 2006. Books are available in hardcover or softcover formats and today a growing number of books are also available electronically as e-books. There are several categories a book publishing. Trade books are the type of books most people are familiar with. They are available on almost any subject and/or for the general reader juvenile or adult. This category includes fiction, biographies, travel guides, cookbooks, children's books and non-fiction books on almost any subject. You will find trade books in bookstores and libraries and some are also available through book clubs. Any student is going to be familiar with educational books, which are published by textbook publishers for use in instruction in kindergarten through college. They are available through school districts and in college bookstores but usually not in academic libraries except, perhaps, on reserve for a class. Reference books are another category. These books are intended to be consulted for summary information as opposed to being read cover to cover. Most current reference books are usually found in the reference sections of libraries. Here is some additional information on a few types of reference sources. Dictionaries and thesauri providing information about words, their definition, usage, pronunciation and history. Encyclopedias provide overview information about almost every subject possible. There are about general encyclopedias, such as Encyclopedia Britannica or World Book, and more detailed specialized encyclopedias such as Gales Encyclopedia of Cancer or encyclopedia of Black Studies. Some encyclopedias are called dictionaries such as the four-volume international Dictionary of film and filmmakers. Almanacs are useful resources for statistical and descriptive data on countries, US states, sports, flags, defense, really just about anything. Almanacs are normally published annually and are a great resource for fact-checking any statistics. Atlases provide maps and other geographic information. More and more reference books are being published online as databases and the content is frequently more up-to-date than the print counterpart. In addition, online reference sources frequently include information that could not possibly be in the print versions such as video clips and links to other sources of information on the web. The final category of book to consider is the scholarly book. These types of books are frequently published by university presses such as Harvard University Press or by specialized academic associations. Many scholarly books may have started their life as a doctoral dissertation and contain highly detailed and specialized information. Now let's turn our attention to another familiar information package –periodicals, sometimes also called serials. This includes newspapers such as The New York Times, newsletters such as Distance Education Report, magazines such as Time, Popular Mechanics, for ladies – Home Journal and scholarly journals such as American Historical Review. Many scholarly journals are peer-reviewed that is there's an editorial board composed of a respected scholars in the field who review any new article that is submitted for publication. The editorial board must approve each article before acceptance, which helps to attest to the trustworthiness of the articles published in the journal. Periodicals are usually kept in a special library section including a location where you can browse the most recent issues. In the past libraries kept back issues of their periodicals on microfilm or microfiche. Some still do, but today more and more libraries rely on databases or electronic subscriptions that provide access to large backgrounds of periodicals. Last but certainly not least, is the open Web. The web’s expansion has been breathtaking accounting for exponential growth in the amount of information available to us all. In 2008, barely eighteen years after the initial development of HTML, the basic language of the web, it is a rarity to find a business, governmental entity or educational institution that does not have a website. Indeed anyone can publish on the web and many do. Just how trustworthy information is on any given website is an open question. That's why most instructors want students to use more traditional sources of information, Nevertheless there's plenty of great information on the open web and we're going to look at how to evaluate information from the web and from all of the information sources I mentioned in this episode later in the series.
While I was preparing the script for this episode I came across a very interesting tutorial on the web developed at Penn State University Libraries. It's called “The information cycle: how today's events are tomorrow's information”. In the tutorial the authors use the example the Columbine shooting tragedy in 1999 to show how information evolves overtime into different formats. Within hours and even minutes of shooting on April 20th 1999 there was information appearing on TV, the radio and the Internet. The day after the shooting all the country's newspapers described the event devoting extra time with more complete coverage fleshing out some of the details. In the weeks following the tragedy there were numerous articles in the weekly news magazines such as Time and Newsweek that went into still greater depth. Then in the months that followed the first articles in scholarly journals began to appear offering more in-depth analysis. Finally, in the years following Columbine various books were published that put the event in a larger perspective. This information cycle suggests one of the reasons that many instructors insist that students read and cite scholarly literature and books in the research papers. It simply because the information provided in scholarly sources is more likely to provide depth and perspective than you will find in a newspaper or news magazine account.
So, now let's look at the different ways information is packaged today. Of course, there's the book. Printed books, glued or sewn pages-bound, with covers have been around in one form or another for many centuries. The publication of books began as a trickle following the invention of a movable type by Gutenberg in the middle of the 15th century. Today it has become a flood with net sales by US publishers exceeding twenty four billion dollars in 2006. Books are available in hardcover or softcover formats and today a growing number of books are also available electronically as e-books. There are several categories a book publishing. Trade books are the type of books most people are familiar with. They are available on almost any subject and/or for the general reader juvenile or adult. This category includes fiction, biographies, travel guides, cookbooks, children's books and non-fiction books on almost any subject. You will find trade books in bookstores and libraries and some are also available through book clubs. Any student is going to be familiar with educational books, which are published by textbook publishers for use in instruction in kindergarten through college. They are available through school districts and in college bookstores but usually not in academic libraries except, perhaps, on reserve for a class. Reference books are another category. These books are intended to be consulted for summary information as opposed to being read cover to cover. Most current reference books are usually found in the reference sections of libraries. Here is some additional information on a few types of reference sources. Dictionaries and thesauri providing information about words, their definition, usage, pronunciation and history. Encyclopedias provide overview information about almost every subject possible. There are about general encyclopedias, such as Encyclopedia Britannica or World Book, and more detailed specialized encyclopedias such as Gales Encyclopedia of Cancer or encyclopedia of Black Studies. Some encyclopedias are called dictionaries such as the four-volume international Dictionary of film and filmmakers. Almanacs are useful resources for statistical and descriptive data on countries, US states, sports, flags, defense, really just about anything. Almanacs are normally published annually and are a great resource for fact-checking any statistics. Atlases provide maps and other geographic information. More and more reference books are being published online as databases and the content is frequently more up-to-date than the print counterpart. In addition, online reference sources frequently include information that could not possibly be in the print versions such as video clips and links to other sources of information on the web. The final category of book to consider is the scholarly book. These types of books are frequently published by university presses such as Harvard University Press or by specialized academic associations. Many scholarly books may have started their life as a doctoral dissertation and contain highly detailed and specialized information.
