On "online" research

[bunnyjadwiga]

A faculty member in a metro area commented that they made their students include one resource in their paper bibliographies that wasn't online. I'm reposting my response:

We've had to beg our professors to REMOVE this requirement from their
papers-- we subscribe to 20,000-30,000 journals online through
electronic journal services and only about 4,000 in print, and we were
having to teach the students BAD research habits to find anything
related to their papers in our print journals. Bigger institutions
with larger research collections don't have this problem yet, but I
can see it coming down the pike.

Instead, we teach the students the difference between the subscription
services, with subject indexing, that we have, and the 'open web' and
it's worked out so far-- but that's because we catch them twice in
their first year of college. Changes in the "first year experience"
coming down *our* pike may mess that up.

If I could do one thing as a professional researcher in the SCA, I
would get SCAdians to find out what electronic resources their local
libraries offer, and have them USE those resources, and demand more.
Also, I run into a lot of people who think that once a journal is
electronic it's no longer accessible to non-academics-- but most small
colleges will let you come in and use a public-use computer in the
library to access their electronic journals.

A while back I ran into someone from the Midrealm who was allegedly
marked down for using "Early English Books Online" (a subscription
service) for her herbal research, because it was "Online." I couldn't
decide whether to laugh or cry-- these are scanned microfilms of
multiple versions of extant printed books from the Early printed books
period (1473 to 1700), so it was the closest to primary sources you
could get. In some cases, it's the ONLY way to get access to those
resources as they haven't been reprinted and are in closed special
collections. Only rather rich libraries have access to it, and it's
worth tracking down any libraries in your area that have it that will
let you use it on their computers.

Comments

[fiannaharpar.livejournal.com]

One of the best classes I ever took was a Critical Thinking class that spent the first two weeks talking about how to vet online sources. I still use the information when teaching documentation classes in the SCA.

[deborah]

Even in library school in 2004, I had some professors who didn't understand the difference between "open web" and "peer reviewed journal to which the university's primary access is via a computer". To be sure, some professors actually did want us to use print resources: Balay, various encyclopedias, some CQ publications we only had in print, its center. Teaching prospective librarians how to value a high-quality print reference collection is a wonderful thing. But that is different from using the right resources to find the information you need, and in this day and age, a lot of institutions (such as yours) have more digital than print, especially in recent fields and in the sciences.

On the other hand, I think it's very reasonable to tell your students that they have to limit their open-Web citations to a bare minimum. And it would be kind of neat to do a bibliographic instruction research project in conjunction with the faculty member in which the student did an assisted literature search with a tutor looking over their shoulder to make sure that the "fulltext" box never got checked. It would be pedagogically cool if you could turn on an interface to an index/abstract database that HID whether or not there was fulltext and available until after the abstract had been read, and the student had the opportunity to check a box adding the article to a shopping cart. Then, if it turned out that the items in the shopping cart weren't available, part of the assignment would be the students still had to follow through and obtain those articles by hook or by crook. Which, these days, with automatic plug-ins from most subscription databases into interlibrary loan systems, would be pretty trivial, anyway. Which is a lesson in and of itself!

[pearl]

It would be pedagogically cool if you could turn on an interface to an index/abstract database that HID whether or not there was fulltext and available until after the abstract had been read, and the student had the opportunity to check a box adding the article to a shopping cart.

I've seen* this sort of thing done with MetaLib, where you'd find an interesting reference, and then you'd find out if it was available online, in hardcopy on campus, or was somewhere else.

At the two universities I've had regular dealings with in Australia, inter-library loans were only really available to the postgraduate students, and strictly regulated because it costs so much money, and of course the more obscure the article the longer it takes for it to show up, by which time the assignment would probably have ended. It is a cool idea though.

*I'm not a librarian, I just have had this experience as a user of various library systems.

[bytchearse.livejournal.com]

BRAVO!!!!!!

[landverhuizer.livejournal.com]

last paragraph... actually I find that wayyy cool!

Our local library is very sucky, but can get a few semi-decent books from other libraries in the province shipped in. Too much here is French :s our local university is also French... I have hit a few walls here with that too. But, different country and rather unique province.

[math5.livejournal.com]

Too much here is French :s
That's impossible. There can't be too much in French :D

[landverhuizer.livejournal.com]

LOL, I should rephrase, I am not enough French ;P

[dreamingbear.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, yes, there can if ni gavarish pa-franzuski

[anastasiav.livejournal.com]

I applaud what you're saying, but let me comment on this:

Also, I run into a lot of people who think that once a journal is electronic it's no longer accessible to non-academics-- but most small colleges will let you come in and use a public-use computer in the library to access their electronic journals.

At least for me, that makes it effectively no longer accessible. A hard copy journal I can copy and take home to read at my leisure. I simply don't have for or five hours at a stretch to spend doing research in the library any longer. Students can access this material through remote access see list here - I cannot.

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

Most of the time you can email the articles to yourself, or save them on a thumb drive, rather than trying to read it on the screen or print it at the library's printing costs (though those are usually the same as copy costs, or less.)

[anastasiav.livejournal.com]

USM does not allow them to be printed, or emailed to a non USM email address.

I hadn't thought of the thumb drive.

wierd

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

Of course, if they don't allow printing or emailing, they might not allow downloading to thumb drives. I've not run into institutions that let people in the door and still had such a restrictive policy-- most ejournal subscription agreements allow for printing/downloading, but you never know what one uptight senior librarian may decide.

[ealdthryth.livejournal.com]

We run into the same thing at the public library with high school studens doing research. Their teachers tell them things like they can only have 2 online sources and 5 print sources. It is sometimes almost impossible to find 5 print sources. Our Youth Servies manager has even without an explanatory letter that students can take to teachers to help them understand subscription databases.

[kandy-elizabet.livejournal.com]

Man, it's so different from when I was in school these (mumble) years ago.

If it's available, actually, I'd love to see the outline on the class on evaluating on line resources. My research training goes back to microfiche in the basement (and even then I was one of the few students who would take the time to dig deeper), and thumbing through actual card catalogs -- then simply strolling the stacks near the number of one book to see what else might be there.

Of course, the last time I went to Penn and looked at EEBO, it was actually "EEBOMicrofiche...." :)

[tattycat.livejournal.com]

We've just started having this problem-- with our new librarian, who wanted us to replace the ancient encyclopedias we weeded (because we have the same material in a subscription database). Her reasoning was that the kids are told not to use online resources, and "it's just easier" to keep the print than teach them the databases =/= the Web.

[hakerh.livejournal.com]

Wait, someone was marked down for using EEBO? *Shaking head*

I've been going on a rampage of saving copies of anything even remotely interesting, since my EEBO access runs out at the end of this semester if all goes according to plan & I graduate.

[pearl]

It would mean more bibliographic information to record in ones' references, but maybe considering resources that are provided through EZProxy or somesuch, could be considered to be 'closed' and part of the uni instead of on the open web?

I mean where the URL still contains your university, like http://[resource URL].ezproxy.[university].edu.au

Including the URL in the bibliography would show that it was an 'approved' source, and not wikipedia. It just all falls apart when you look at a lot of the journals that have made their back issues online available to anyone though. (Examples being the Hrčak portal, or the copyright-expired books at the Digital Library of Wielkopolska.)

I do wonder how much of the anti-internet sources feelings are due to the use of the internet being seen as the 'easy' way to get information, so the lecturers are trying to get their students to walk into a library instead of sitting at home on their computers with remote access to electronic journals?

[hudebnik.livejournal.com]

Prescript: I'm the "faculty member" in question.

I do wonder how much of the anti-internet sources feelings are due to the use of the internet being seen as the 'easy' way to get information, so the lecturers are trying to get their students to walk into a library instead of sitting at home on their computers with remote access to electronic journals?

Yes, that was part of the point: not to tell them that everything on the Web is unreliable, but that there are sources that aren't on the Web, and that they really should learn where the campus library is. (And it's only one source out of half a dozen or more....)

I would be tickled pink if the students were citing quality academic journals that they happened to get in electronic form; if they were, I would drop the requirement. But in practice, the students have been citing (and/or copying without attribution) whatever Web page turns up first on Google. I think the distinction between subscription services and "the open Web" is too subtle for a lot of these students :-)

I also spend part of the semester discussing how to assess the reliability and biases of various sources, including Web sites. We look at humorously bogus sites, like http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/ and http://dhmo.org , as well as less-benign ones like http://martinlutherking.org ).

*nod*

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

"I think the distinction between subscription services and "the open Web" is too subtle for a lot of these students :-)"

It sounds like you're spending a good deal of class time on the stuff we try to hammer into them in our information literacy sessions. We suffer from the probable delusion that the time we spend on them-- and the instructors' insistence that they use *scholarly/academic journals*-- sinks in... But how much of it *sticks* once they get further on, we haven't figured out how to test in the upper levels yet.

(We did find out, last year, that they recognize and remember Academic Search Premier, the main general subscription journal index/full text database we pound into them... because when they heard it might be cancelled, they flocked to sign a petition. Made us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Librarians: we're suckers for that stuff.)

Not SCA research (per se), but ...

[florentinescot.livejournal.com]

Preach it!

I have my students write a series of 4 short papers -- an Endangered Animal, an Endangered Plant, something Invasive, and an Ecosystem. I'm also at a *very* small Community College with a pitiful library.

For the endangered stuff, there are virtually *NO* print resources -- at least not here. I do require at least 2 different web pages/sources (corroborating but not duplicate information). And I've had students cite online Botanical Journals (which absolutely thrilled me to death!). The Georgia Library System is pretty phenomenal especially in terms of the electronic resources.

Now, if SCA folks could only understand that *finding* a new book on EEBO doesn't mean that they *own* the find. Research doesn't just include the "literature search" -- it's what you do with it afterwards that counts!

Re: Not SCA research (per se), but ...

[pearl]

Research doesn't just include the "literature search" -- it's what you do with it afterwards that counts!

Goodness yes! There is a difference between a literature list and actually writing up an essay/piece on the topic. The problem with the SCA is that there is some resource hoarding because it's often the loudest person who implicitly gets the credit. Even when the person receiving the credit admits that they didn't do anything.

Case in point: a Viking-age person had figured out a possible method of making a pleated Birka underdress, but somehow a person she'd been talking this over with got to be described as the 'girl who had figured it out.' She hadn't, and never said that she had, she just thought it was a good idea and had been chattier than the person who had actually come up with the idea. Does that make any sense?

A less confusing, non-SCA example, is Jesse Byock 'figuring out' that Egil Skallagrimsson probably had Padgets disease, when Þórður Harðarson had written about it in Icelandic in 1984, so was much quieter about it.

Re: Not SCA research (per se), but ...

[florentinescot.livejournal.com]

nods. I've seen a couple of instances lately where folks saw a painting (on a publicly accessible web-site) and were grumpy because Other Folks posted the same painting that they did without giving them credit for the find. (and yeah, I was directly involved in one of those). I know that folks have that mind-set, and I try and accommodate them; but I don't understand that mind-set.

And the "who publishes first" isn't just an SCA phenomenon. I'm in Taxonomy -- the ultimate Publish First field!

Re: Not SCA research (per se), but ...

[pearl]

'Publish first' is common everywhere, it's just... it seems to make people go a bit weirder in the SCA. I can't put my finger on what the difference is, but it seems to be a lot less self-confident for SCA folks who feel that without being given credit for finding a pretty picture, they're not as valuable.

I believe I know the re-posting incident you're referring to. And I have to admit, that I wanted to shrug and say 'you put this information in a publicly accessible place, what did you think would happen?' When I was running a website about Baltic stuff (which I need to put back up online really...) I honestly didn't expect because I made the website that I would get some sort of magical credit for what I did. Certainly, I put my name on it to say 'I put all of this together', but that's it.
Obviously people feel differently about this, I wonder if it has much to do with the differences between, say, Arts and Science (undergraduate) training.

In Arts, you put in your bibliography _everything_, including that blog that had lots of cool links to resources that you also whacked into the list.
In Science, you will get marks deducted if you include sources in your bibliography that you didn't directly reference in the text.

It's a complex issue, and probably somewhat off topic. :)

Re: Not SCA research (per se), but ...

[florentinescot.livejournal.com]

You said

I wonder if it has much to do with the differences between, say, Arts and Science (undergraduate) training.

nods thoughtfully. I'll bet you're right. It's the subtle difference between a Bibliography and References.

I'm with you, if I found it in a Public Place, and post the find in A Public Place -- it's yours to run with.

And you're so right about the complexity of the topic. We should probably stop hi-jacking bunnyjadwiga's journal, and finish this discussion elsewhere! :-)

Re: Not SCA research (per se), but ...

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

but but but...
I don't mind if you hijack my journal to have this discussion...

Re: Not SCA research (per se), but ...

[florentinescot.livejournal.com]

OK. I've been on other journals where the "owners" didn't want it to go off on Wild Tangents! I suppose if I wasn't a biologist, I would have been a librarian -- it's the taxonomist in me. When I was in the 5th grade, I cataloged all my books with Dewey Decimal numbers .....

Re: Not SCA research (per se), but ...

[florentinescot.livejournal.com]

And to address the references issue ...

One of the things that I wonder about in terms of SCA A&S entries/documentation ...

In the sciences, you do only reference what you actually cite. Only things referenced in the text can be listed as references. And then there's the whole format differences. The CBE style for in-text citations and bibliographic entries is way different from most humanities/APA/Chicago styles. I'm slightly concerned about freaking the judges out!

On the other hand, I'm no longer "afraid" of A&S jusges. I survived prelims and The Defense. :-S