REFINING YOUR SEARCH
You probably all know how to surf the Internet for information, so I won't go through a lesson here. Surfing is a great way to find a wealth of information on any subject. But there are some drawbacks to search engines and meta-search engines like www.google.com or www.dogpile.com. The drawbacks are:
You tend to get too much information.
You tend to get lots of junk mixed in with the good stuff.
First Search
If you're surfing the Internet for resources on a subject, then you are most likely coming up with a huge list of websites. As an example, if you look up "F. Scott Fitzgerald" on google, you come up with about 12,500,000 possible sites! That number is most likely made up of a lot of bad or irrelevant sites, with some very choice sites mixed in like needles in a stack of hay.
Refined Search
If you narrow your search to "F. Scott Fitzgerald" AND "Great Gatsby" you chop the number to around 826,000. That's a little better. So, it pays to narrow your search.
Still More Refined Search
You might narrow it even further by looking for information about a particular character, so type in "F. Scott Fitzgerald" AND "Great Gatsby" AND Daisy. You will then be directed to only about 93,900 resources. That's better but still quite daunting.
SEARCH TIPS FOR SEARCH ENGINES
If you do important research via search engines like this, make sure you read the "search tips" found for your search engine of choice, for search techniques can differ from engine to engine. For instance, Google offers several search help pages to help you refine your search.
WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? AND WHY SHOULD I BELIEVE THEM?
Anyone can create a website and benefit from worldwide distribution, however insane, or subtly illogical, her/his ideas may be. So make sure you know how to read web sources with a critical eye. (Also see SMGW pp. 744-746). If you do, you're sure to find some stellar sources. However, for important research, there are other options that just might make your job easier . . .
After a stretch, move on to the Second Module
MODULE 1 ACTIVITIES
Go to www.google.com. Search for James Joyce just so, without any quotation marks. How many hits are reported? (You can find this number in the "results" listing in the upper right corner of the page.
Now, put quotation marks around "James Joyce" just like this. Without the q. marks, google lists all hits for James and all hits for Joyce. Ugh! But with quotation marks, google will list only those sites mentioning both the first and last name together. Cool trick, huh? How many hits are reported?
Now, search for "James Joyce" AND Araby just so. Google will now search for all sites mentioning the first and last name together as well as mentioning the short story. How many hits?
Check this site out. http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=16719. Then avoid any such sites like this that list "free essays" or that don't clarify authorship. These paper mills are detrimental to your academic career and make very bad resources to boot. Just being associated with one can earn a paper a zero. Question: Who is the author of this essay (or what is the author's handle)? And why does this site list this essay as Free? Who does this appeal to?
Follow these directions for this resource I found though the search above:
Go here: http://www.joycesociety.org/links.html >
Click Texts/Criticism >
Scroll down to Araby and click Reader's Araby - collaborative hypertext version of the story from the World Wide Dubliners. (It's under "Texts, Criticism, and Hypertexts.) >
Scroll down once more to Araby and click "Araby" (html with annotations by Wallace Gray). Now this looks like a great hypertext version of the short story with notes by a scholar! But who is Wallace Gray? And is he an expert we can trust or just some guy that likes Joyce? >
Hit your back button on your browser once to go back to the previous page, and then click About the World Wide Dubliners Project >
QUESTION: Who is Wallace Gray, and does he sound like a Joyce expert we can trust? Explain.
How does this source stack up against the Items in Evaluating Information Found on the Internet? Take a few notes about it in regards to the following items:
Authorship
Publishing body
Point of view or bias
Referral to other sources
Verifiability
Currency
Some experts and librarians and amateurs in virtually every field have already done the weeding through of information for you and have presented their findings in general subject directories. There are virtually thousands upon thousands of subject directories on the net. Here are three respected general subject directories you may find useful. Visit each one of them now to check out the layout. Try a sample search of your own to see how they work:
THREE RESPECTED GENERAL SUBJECT DIRECTORIES
Librarians' Index - www.lii.org
"The mission of Librarians' Index to the Internet is to provide a well-organized point of access for reliable, trustworthy, librarian-selected Internet resources, serving California, the nation, and the world." Their motto is "Information you can trust" (lii.org).
If you search for "F. Scott Fitzgerald" at lii.org, you get one source as opposed to 191,000 on google. But it's a good source that will lead you to others.
"INFOMINE is a virtual library of Internet resources relevant to faculty, students, and research staff at the university level. . . . INFOMINE is librarian built. Librarians from the University of California, Wake Forest University, California State University, the University of Detroit - Mercy, and other universities and colleges have contributed to building INFOMINE" (infomine.ucr.edu).
If you search for "F. Scott Fitzgerald" at Infomine, you get six expert selected resources.
Academic Info - www.academicinfo.net - Recommended Browsing
Mission: To "[i]mprove access to online educational resources by developing an easy to use subject directory covering each academic discipline" (academicinfo.net)
If you search for "Fitzgerald" here, you get nine sites.
For each directory, make sure to find and read the search tips--just as you would for a search engine--for techniques differ from directory to directory. For more on subject directories, see Recommended Subject Directories.
MODULE 2 ACTIVITIES
Follow the directions:
Go to infomine.ucr.edu >
Enter a search for James Joyce >
Click The James Joyce Scholar's Collection >
Click Brows the Collection >
Click James Joyce, the citizen and the artist (Peake, Charles) (1977) >
Click Peake, Charles James Joyce, the citizen and the artist. Now, through infomine we have found a fantastic resource on James Joyce! This is an amazing site full of out of print texts by Joyce scholars to peruse! This is the kind of research that takes a little time and a little effort but that yields huge rewards. Since we're interested in a short story from the Dubliners collection >
Scroll down to the Table of Contents and click Chapter 1: Dubliners, pp. 1-55 >
QUESTION: Fill in the two blanks here to show that you made it to the actual resource: To support his plea for publication, Joyce claimed to the English publisher by the name of "..." that "... ."
WHAT ARE EBOOKS?
Cerro Coso subscribes to netLibrary! This means that you can check out complete virtual books online and read them--without ever stepping foot in a library. This is a great service and can be quite advantageous to a researcher. The beauty is that books are never physically checked out! So numerous students around the country may be reading the exact same ebook at the exact same time. Definitely try this out.
MODULE 3 ACTIVITIES
Here are the steps to get you going:
Go to Cerro Coso's Learning Resource Center - http://www.cerrocoso.edu/lrc/. >
Scroll down to "Other" and click eBook Information, read the description and the directions on how to access eBooks. The library has made it easy! All you need is your student ID number (don't forget the @ sign in front).
Go back to the main LRC page. Under "Books," click CC Library Catalog.
In "Basic Search" type in james joyce. Then scroll down to the "Limits" section and select eBooks. Doing so will limit your search to eBooks only! (This is most useful to distance learner who are far from the library in Ridgecrest.) Once you have entered your search and limited it to eBooks, click the orange arrow button to conduct your search. This should take you to many fantastic sources on Joyce and this particular short story. >
Scroll through the pages until you find Joyce's Comic Portrait. Click this title to view this sources digital catalog card. Click the Electronic book link to view this eBook. (Remember, you will need your Student ID number to log in at the beginning of any eBook session. You will then be taken to the excellent netlibrary.com, host to our college's eBook holdings! (Hint for future researching: Once you're in netlibrary, you can stay in and conduct as many searches as you like without going back to the college's LRC. This is a convenient feature!) Click View This eBook.
In the lefthand column of your screen, click the Search tab and conduct a search for the word Araby. This search should yield seven pages where this particular short story is mentioned. >
Under listing number 1, click View this Page. This should take you to page 86, where you will find numerous references to "Araby" highlighted in light yellow. >
QUESTION: Fill in the following blanks in parentheses to show that you made it to the actual resource:
"In June 1894, for example, the ( ... ) published a piece on the bazaar "Araby," with a report and several photographs, among them the "Cafe Chantant" and a full-page beauty of Araby with ( ... ) look and ( ... ) arm. (This picture seems to shadow forth the figure of Mangan's sister in the "Araby" story of 1906.) These items point to the interests of a certain class of society and also of a young boy of twelve such as the one depicted in the story of the same name as the fair, and Joyce was himself ( ... ) in the summer of 1894.
WHAT ARE THE ELECTRONIC RESOURCES AT ON THE LRC WEBSITE?
Cerro Coso subscribes to numerous top notch databases for student use. It costs the college a lot of money to subscribe to these services! Thank you, Cerro Coso! Examples of databases that may be useful to you are
InfoTrac Expanded Academic ASAP
Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center
Literature Resource Center
Britannica Online
Be sure to make use of these while you are a student, for these databases are fantastic places to find research materials for your projects. Follow the directions below to learn how to use one of them.
MODULE 4 ACTIVITIES
InfoTrac Expanded Academic ASAP
Go to Cerro Coso's Learning Resource Center - http://www.cerrocoso.edu/lrc/. >
Click Magazine, Journal, and Newspaper Articles Indexes. >
If you are on campus, advance to "D" below. If you are at home, you will have to enter your student i.d. number. If you don't know this, contact admissions and records or find it on some registration materials you've filed away somewhere. It is usually an eight digit number and is NOT, I repeat, NOT your Social Security number. >
Now peruse the databases at your fingertips. Newsbank, Opposing Viewpoints, and Expanded Academic ASAP are particularly useful. >
Click on Expanded Academic ASAP. This is one of Infotrac's many useful databases. This database will give you access to thousands of journals, newspapers and magazines. Basically, it's a huge periodicals section at your fingertips. This is the resource I use all the time. >
Imagine that you are writing an argumentative paper on James Joyce. So type in the yellow search guide box the term James Joyce, but don't click "search yet. >
Under Limit the current search, go ahead and limit your search by clicking to documents with full text. This will ensure that the listings you get for your search will include only full essays. If you don't take this step, then many abstracts of sources that InfoTrac doesn't have full access to will be posted along with full sources. This is alright if you wish to conduct deeper research and hunt down sources in other locations (hard work). Usually, unless I'm doing VERY deep research, I limit my search so that I get only the full sources readily available to me via InfoTrac. It's just easier that way. >
Click search. >
If all goes well, you should see a button to view numerous articles. Click on a few and peruse. Notice how each article is set up. If you find one that you wish to print, remember to click the "print" button to the left to format the page for your printer. Doing so will save paper and printer ink.
QUESTION: Find one interesting article that deals with James Joyce. Provide the following here:
The title of the article
The name of the author
the name of the journal or periodical in which it first appeared
the date of its first publication
One interesting and brief word-for-word quote.
SEARCHING FOR LOCAL HOLDINGS AND DISTANCE LEARNER CHECK-OUT PROCEDURES
Do you long for the real deal? An actual book in your hands? If you have a library nearby, then go for it. Or, if the Cerro Coso library is holding a book that sounds perfect for your project, go ahead and check it out! The library has in place a distance learner check out policy that makes it possible for you to receive college books through the mail. Keep in mind that return postage will be up to you. If you're interested, here's what you do:
MODULE 5 ACTIVITIES
Go to Cerro Coso's Learning Resource Center - http://www.cerrocoso.edu/lrc/. >
Click Books and conduct a General Keyword search for James Joyce. You should see about forty-eight titles in the library's holdings. >
Scroll down just a bit and click on the title James Joyce: his way of interpreting the modern world. This one looks like an interesting source for an interpretive paper. If you find a book that sounds interesting, then write down its information. >
QUESTION: The complete fifteen digit call number and year of this book is what? ( ... ) >
When you are interested in a book like this, write down all of its information. Then >
If you would like to check out the book, go back to the Learning Resource Center main page and click on Distance Learners. Follow the directions for requesting the book for mailing. Then wait expectantly the next few days as the book travels via US Postal Service to your door!
QUESTION: Right now, and without checking out a book, from the Learning Resource Center homepage, click Distance Learners and then Book Request Form. Fill in the following blanks to show you made it to the page.
"The following form is to be used for ( ... ) for a book located in the book collection of the Cerro Coso Library. Please check the ( ... ) as to the availability of the materials before requesting them. Click on the Library Catalog link located on this page or through the Library's opening web page. Book requests are not accepted for ( ... ) nor for books from ( ... ) libraries.