Information Literacy and Source Documentation

Introduction

What is information literacy and what does it mean to be information literate? The American Library Association defines information literacy as a set of abilities empowering individuals to “recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.” While information literacy is often talked about in schools in terms of doing library research for papers, speeches, annotated bibliographies, and other sorts of classroom assignments, we use and need information in every aspect of our lives.

Think about all of the informal research we do each day. We research in our personal lives, such as looking up movie and book reviews, how-to videos on YouTube, product reviews, and strategies for parenting. We research in our professional lives, searching to find job ads, information about future careers, tips on job interviews, or even the information we need to do our day-to-day job duties. We all have information needs, large and small, and being able to effectively identify and meet those needs is at the core of information literacy.

This chapter will focus on the research process for the kind of projects you might do in college, but the process is similar for any type of research you might do in life. Thinking through the steps ensures that you will end up with the kind of product you want.

Types of Sources

Students often encounter a checklist of different publication format requirements when they receive their first major research assignment. They may be asked to use a certain number of books or a certain number of scholarly journal articles. They may be told not to use any “websites” or may be limited to only a certain number.

Before starting on a research assignment, students may not have thought much about these different kinds of sources and why each exists. Some formats will be relevant to one research question but not others. Which are likely to be most useful to you will depend on both your assignment requirements and the nature of your research question. There are many types of formats, but we can briefly explore a few of the major formats you are likely to encounter.

Scholarly Journals (Peer Reviewed/Academic Journals)

Scholarly journals are also sometimes called "peer reviewed" journals, and that is the easiest way to understand the definition. Many journals send articles to a group of the author’s peers (other experts in their field) to critique (and sometimes even reject) the article before it can be published. Scholarly articles are written BY experts and FOR experts. For this reason, they often use complicated, technical language, and they may be long and occasionally challenging to read if you are not an expert in your field yet.

So why use scholarly articles?

1. Quality control—peer review process gives you some confidence in the quality of the information
2. Written by experts—journals are where the scholarly conversation takes place and new knowledge is created
3. Requirement—sometimes professors will require you to use scholarly articles

Generally, scholarly journals are considered the “gold standard” for academic research, and it is expected in many disciplines that you become familiar with how to find and use journals.

Tip: Most databases will include a check box to limit your search to scholarly or peer-reviewed journal articles. If you want scholarly articles, search for this option in any tool you use.

Popular Publications

Newspapers and magazines are generally considered popular publications. Examples include Time Magazine, the New York Times newspaper, Popular Science, etc. Articles are usually written by journalists/reporters and mostly avoid technical language or jargon—they are written for the non-expert. That does not mean the articles are bad or false, but they are not original research and they do not have a peer review process. (Generally, articles in popular sources are reviewed by editors and fact checkers, but not subject matter experts.)

Sometimes, popular sources like magazines and newspapers will be great for your research, and other times you need to show that you are relying on experts to support your arguments by using scholarly articles. Both can be useful, depending on your purposes. However, you should expect to find popular publications much less welcome, and probably less useful, as you progress in your chosen career or field of study. In other words, as you become an expert yourself, you will probably need to rely more on resources written for other experts!

Tip: How do you know if an article you found is scholarly or popular? You can sometimes identify the format by simply glancing at the article. Scholarly/peer reviewed articles tend to be much longer. They often have graphs, statistics, and data tables, but not usually many other types of images. Usually the author’s credentials will be listed, such as degrees they hold, institutions at which they work, etc. Scholarly articles also tend to use jargon and formal, technical language specific to that field—they are written by experts, for experts. Popular articles tend to be shorter. They sometimes, but not always, have images like photographs, decorative illustrations, etc. Authors may not be listed, or if they are those authors may not be experts in the subject of the article. Popular articles are usually written for the general public, so they use more accessible language non-experts can understand, and they may have a more casual tone. In addition, many library databases indicate whether a publication is peer reviewed or not. Often there is a link in the database to get more information about the publication itself, or you can use a search engine to look for the publication’s homepage, which should tell you whether they have a peer review process. Finally, you can always ask a librarian for help if you are unsure.

Trade Publications

Trade publications are written by and for people in a specific field. Unlike scholarly journals, though, they are usually more focused on practical news, opinions, or other casual information rather than original research studies. Many professional associations, for instance, publish newsletters or magazines. Because they are written for people in a specific field, they do sometimes use jargon and technical language, but not as much as you may find in scholarly journals.

Books

Books provide detail and comprehensive coverage of topics that are not duplicated by other formats. Sometimes new student researchers avoid books. They cannot be accessed quite as quickly as electronic articles, and students may think they do not have time to read a whole book just to do one project or paper. However, books can be a great way to get a huge amount of information collected all in one place. Typically, you will not read the whole book either. Use the Table of Contents (at the beginning of the book) or the Index (at the end of the book) to skip to just the chapters or sections that are most relevant.

Tip: The Harper College Library catalog will provide a description and a table of contents for most books. Search out those options in the item record, or ask a librarian for help.

Ebooks are another option for off-site researchers. Besides including the full text of their print-version equivalents, they are usually full-text searchable. That means you can more quickly determine whether a given title is going to be useful for your research project.

Tip: If you want a book you can access immediately, you can find ebooks in both the Harper College Library catalog and OneSearch. Both allow you to limit your search to ebooks. Explore the limiting options along the side of the search results in either tool, or ask a librarian for help. Note, you will need to log in with your myHarper username and password to use some ebooks.

Online Formats

For the purposes of this chapter, we will define online content as materials that are available freely online that do not fall into one of the other categories above. (For instance, many magazines and newspapers publish free online articles; you can find free ebooks online, etc.) There are many formats that could be put in this category, but here are some of the most common:

Blogs — Frequently updated websites that do not necessarily require extensive technical skills and can be published by virtually anyone, often at no cost to themselves other than the time they devote to content creation. Usually marked by postings that indicate the date when each was written.

Online Videos — Short videos produced by anybody, with a lot of money or a little money, about anything for the world to see. Common sites for these are YouTube and Vimeo. Videos can be for any purpose, including to educate, to entertain, to frustrate, to document, etc.

Podcasts — Digital audio files, produced by anyone and about anything, that are available for downloading, often by subscription.

Social Media — Sites or apps that allow users to connect with other users to share information and interact. Examples include Facebook and Twitter. Because sharing happens so quickly, both accurate and inaccurate information can spread rapidly and widely.

Websites — Digital items, each consisting of multiple pages produced by someone with at least basic technical skills or the ability to pay someone with technical skills. It can be difficult to differentiate between a website and any of the other online formats listed above, but in practice the difference is not particularly relevant. In general, all online content is quicker and simpler to produce than more traditional formats, which is both a strength and a weakness.

The Information Timeline

The information timeline (sometimes called the information cycle) is one way for us to think about how different kinds of publications provide different perspectives on a topic based on when they are published. Understanding the information timeline lets us know when we can expect information sources to appear in publication, and more broadly improves our understanding of the role each type of source plays in our research. Different formats of information, after all, have varying levels of research depth, credibility, and proximity to the event you might be researching.

We can walk through an example. If you are writing a college research paper about a specific terrorist attack against the United States, these are some common information types and when they would become available:

On the day of the attack, the only information you will find would be from news websites, broadcast media such as CNN, and social media like Twitter or YouTube. (With social media in particular, information often begins appearing as the event itself is still in progress.) This breaking news content will provide immediate information on the event but can also lack context and background information. While most reputable news outlets will at least attempt to do some fact-checking, because of the speed with which news spreads, it will probably be limited. Coverage may be confused and facts may be misreported, but it can still be an important way for people to understand the basics of what happened, connect with those directly or indirectly affected by the event, etc.

The following day, stories will be published in newspapers. Newspaper articles often provide more in-depth information than the earlier online or television reporting. These newspaper articles will begin the task of contextualizing the attacks and will include additional fact-checking. They will also synthesize much of the reporting of the previous day. Other websites, including news sites, may also begin to share information, with varying accuracy and context.

Popular magazine coverage usually appears one to two weeks later, with articles on the attack appearing in publications such as Time and Newsweek or on blogs, news websites, etc. Magazines often provide greater context to a story than is found in newspapers and will develop the background of a story in greater depth. Articles may be authored by journalists, or they may be from experts such as national security specialists or others with relevant expertise. While the articles will not be extensively sourced at this point, analysis is much more robust than that found in social media or newspapers. Similarly, discussions of the attack may appear on websites that provide more in-depth coverage and in other media sites such as podcasts.

After about six months, scholarly journals will begin to publish articles on the attacks. These journal articles provide peer reviewed, discipline-specific research relevant to the attacks. The scholarly articles will be written by experts, will strive to be formally objective, and likely include original research and analysis. Note that they are also likely to be very narrowly focused. Trade publications may also provide relevant trade and industry-specific information and analysis around this time.

Finally, books will begin to appear a year so after a story or event. Books are useful for their in-depth research-based information about your topic; the best of them will also include extensive footnotes, background information, context, and analysis.

While information does not always follow this timeline, this example does provide some generalities that can be useful when you are doing your own research. First, if you are researching something that happened recently, be aware that you may not find scholarly articles or books on that specific event (though you may be able to find some on similar events and relate them to your own topic). Second, you want to think about what type of information you need and search accordingly. For instance, if you want eyewitness accounts, news sites/social media and newspapers would probably be the most obvious choices, allowing you to tailor your searches to those formats specifically. If you want in-depth analysis however, you would be better off with a journal article or book. Knowing what you need and what type of source might have that information will let you design the best search strategy, choose the best search tools, and, ultimately, get you better results.

Let’s Discuss - Scenario #1

Amaya is writing an argumentative paper for her English 101 class. She wants to investigate the impact gun violence has on survivors. She decides to use a Tweet from someone identifying themselves as gun violence survivor as a source in her paper.

What are some of the reasons Amaya might use a Tweet like this as a source? What are some of the problems with using such a source?

Do you think Amaya should have used this Tweet as a source? Why or why not?

Where to Search

Making conscious choices about where you do your research requires an understanding of what tools are available and what kind of information each contains. For example, as we discovered earlier, peer reviewed scholarly literature is the gold standard for many types of research. A Google search is unlikely to connect you with much scholarly literature, so it would be not be the best choice of search tool for finding scholarly articles. The Library Catalog is also a poor place to locate scholarly literature, though it might be ideal for finding books and films. Knowing that a library database would probably be a good place to find scholarly articles helps you search more efficiently and effectively.

The following is a brief list of some popular research tools, along with the kinds of content you can expect to find in each.

Library Catalogs

Library catalogs allow researchers to search items owned by the library. The most common item is print books, but the Harper Library catalog also includes ebooks, DVDs, sheet music, special collections items, and other materials.

As a Harper student, you also have access to something called the I-Share catalog. I-Share is a network of academic libraries in Illinois that partner together to share resources. You can borrow materials, including books, from other I-Share schools with your Harper ID, either by going to those other libraries directly or having the material sent to Harper for pick up. The I-Share catalog allows you to search the materials owned by all those other libraries in one place, and it means you have access to millions of books we do not own at Harper. (For help using the catalog or placing requests for items, speak with a Harper librarian.)

Tip: When searching a Library catalog, you are usually not searching the full text of the books and other materials. Instead, you are searching just the information about the material, which usually includes the author, title, publication date, subject terms, and a basic description and/or table of contents, among other fields. For this reason, you should keep your search terms broader when using the catalog.

Library Databases

Library databases are an important resource for researchers, both student and professional, and understanding how they work will make your library research in the future easier and more productive.

What is a library database? A database is just a searchable collection of information. We use different kinds of databases every day. Spotify is a database of songs to hear. Amazon.com is a database of products for sale. Even your cellphone includes a database of family and friends’ names and phone numbers. When we talk about library databases, we are usually talking about a searchable collection of articles or other written research materials, though Harper does also have image, video, and music databases.

It is important to understand that library databases are not free—libraries pay subscriptions, sometimes large ones, to get access to the content. (This is why it can be difficult to find the full text of scholarly articles for free using Google. Publishers want you to pay for the articles, not get them for free.) You will only have access to Harper's databases while you are an actively enrolled student, but they can be invaluable tools for your college work.

Different databases contain different kinds of content. Many databases only include articles for a particular subject area. An example of a subject-specific database is the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL,) which contains the full text to hundreds of different Nursing and Allied Health related journals. As you might imagine, the CINAHL database would be a poor place to find English Literature or History articles, but it would be excellent for finding high-quality articles for Nursing or other fields like Nutrition or Dentistry.

Some databases contain only certain formats of material. ProQuest Newsstand contains hundreds of reputable national and international newspapers, but only newspapers—no journals, no book chapters. Films on Demand contains only videos. Be aware not only of a database’s subject area but also of the kinds of material formats it contains.

Finally, some databases are multidisciplinary. This means that a single database might cover many different subject areas. These large multidisciplinary databases are often the best, first stop for students doing research, and they are an excellent choice when you are unfamiliar with your topic or its discipline. Academic Search Complete is an example of a large, multidisciplinary database. You can find articles in Academic Search Complete on a wide variety of topics, from Political Science and Psychology to English Literature and Education.

One thing to note is that not every database or database record is available in full text. A database might contain hundreds or even thousands of different full text journals, but it may also include article records where the full text is not available. These abstract-only article records may not be immediately useful to you, but Harper has an Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service that can quickly request the full text of the articles for you. If you have questions about using ILL and accessing items beyond Harper’s collections, speak with a librarian.

Tip: Databases typically focus on particular areas of study, such as Communications or Art, and they can be enormously helpful for finding discipline-specific information relevant to your topic. But ask yourself if your research topic has a multidisciplinary angle. For example, if you are researching bullying in schools, you may want to search databases from several different categories: Education, Sociology, Psychology, etc. You may also want to use a multidisciplinary database that covers multiple areas of study. Think about the whole range of places where published research on your topic is likely to appear, and do not be afraid to give them all a try.

Discovery Services

Library discovery services are relatively new tools available to student researchers. Discovery services allow a user to conduct a search across multiple collections at once. Whether you need books from your library’s physical collection, a newspaper article from the 1970’s, or a scholarly article just published in a well-regarded journal, a discovery service may provide relevant results in one convenient location. Harper’s discovery service is called OneSearch, and you can access it from the Library’s homepage.

Discovery services, including Harper’s OneSearch, are not without issues. While the content of most Harper databases appears in OneSearch results, it does not include content from all Harper databases. Determining which databases are included and which are not can be difficult, but a Harper librarian can assist you.

Tip: For research projects where you are asked to have a mix of books and articles, OneSearch can be an ideal place to begin your research. OneSearch can also be helpful when your research topic is multidisciplinary in nature (i.e., it touches on the literature from several fields of study) as it draws in search results from many databases in a single search.

Search Engines

What tool do you head to first when you need some brief information in your personal life? If are anything like most people, that tool is Google.

Google and other search engines are generally adept at understanding what you want and giving you at least some relevant results, but it is important to understand their strengths and limitations. First, not all information is available online for free. It may sometimes seem like “everything is online,” but there is still a massive amount of information that is not freely available through a Google search. If you go no farther than Google, you will miss out. Second, in college you are generally expected to go beyond basic websites and utilize the resources experts use. You are expected to learn the specialized research tools available to you, especially as you move forward in your discipline. Over-relying on Google might eventually start to impact your grades and your credibility.

That said, Google and other search engines are useful tools that all modern researchers use.

Let’s Discuss – Scenario #2

Carmen is a Harper student. He also has a full-time job at a company that provides technical and computer support to other companies. His boss has asked him to prepare an extensive report on a specific piece of computer software that was recently released, to help the company decide whether they will recommend the software to their clients. He needs to provide a lot of detail, including research on comparable products, professional and user reviews, and information about the technical specifications of the product, among other information.

Think about the types of search tools discussed above (library catalogs, library databases, discovery services, search engines). Which type of search tool(s) do you think Carmen should use to do the research he needs to prepare his report? Why do you think each tool would or would not be useful? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each that might impact Carmen’s decision?

How to Search

Frequently, students come to the library after getting stuck in their research, saying “I just can’t find anything on my topic” or “I can find things on Google but not in library databases.” These types of challenges are extremely common and understandable! Whereas search engines are usually good at interpreting what a user wants, even if the user did not ask for it in the clearest way, library databases are not very adept at interpreting user language. In addition, students may not be familiar with all the features and functions databases offer. There are many ways to improve your search results, however, both in library databases and even using search engines.

Limiters

Before you begin a database search, take a moment to examine your options on the search screen. Explore what limiters are available to you. Have you ever searched online for a product to buy? Then you have probably used limiters. For example, have you set your search in an online store to only show you products below X dollars? That is a limiter—you told the site to limit the results it showed you to only items in your price range. Most search tools have some limiters that can help filter out results you do not want. Here are some of the most common limiters you may encounter in library databases:

• Date or date range—Almost all databases allow you to limit results to a specific date, a range you set, or a general limit (i.e., the last 5 years).
• Scholarly/Peer Reviewed—Databases that contain different formats will often let you limit results to articles from only scholarly or peer reviewed publications.
• Full Text—Some databases only provide full text articles, but others contain both full text articles as well as abstract-only entries, which will usually provide a summary of the article but not the whole thing. While you can request articles through Harper’s Interlibrary Loan service, if you want articles you can read immediately, find out if the database offers the option of limiting to full text results.
• Publication Type—If you are trying to find only one specific type of source, you may find this kind of limiter useful. For instance, if you want newspaper articles, check whether the database you are using includes newspapers and whether you can limit your results to only that format.
• Field Searching—For the most part, simply entering words into a database search box will result in a general keyword search. If you want to make the search more specific, however, you can use field searching. For example, you can check for your search terms in the title, author, abstract, etc. One type of search that can be especially useful is subject term search (sometimes called descriptor or subject heading). Subject terms are controlled vocabulary—the terms the database or the publisher has identified to describe the item. They will be the same across the database, meaning you can use the terms to find other similar materials. In many databases, subject terms will be a clickable link you can use to run a new search with that term, or you can just take note of terms and type them into future searches.

Tip: In some databases, you may need to select “Advanced Search” to access the full range of limiters available. Alternatively, many databases will let you limit your results after you do a search using limiters appearing on the search results screen. It helps to take your time to investigate the options each database offers, because those options can vastly improve your search.

Keywords

We all conduct keyword searches in Google frequently. The basic process seems clear—we type in a word or string of words and Google provides us with a ranked list of websites on which those words appear. It is not always as easy to come up with effective keywords in library databases, however. Here are some general tips:

• Identify the main concepts in your research question by selecting nouns important to the meaning of your question. Leave out words that don’t help the search, such as adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and, usually, verbs.
• For each main concept, list alternative terms, including related words, synonyms, and singular and plural forms of the words. A thesaurus may be useful to help you identify terms. You should also note any terms you come across as you begin researching. Do the articles you found use different terminology you had not thought of? Take note of those terms and add them to your searching.
• Use Boolean operators. When librarians use the phrase “Boolean operators,” we refer mainly to the words AND, OR, and NOT. These terms help you narrow your search results.

1. AND – If the main idea contains two or more ideas, you will want to use AND to combine those terms in your search statement. To look for information about spiders as signs of climate change, you will want to have both terms in the search and perform an AND search: spiders AND climate change.
2. OR – If the main idea has several synonyms, use OR to combine them. Most search tools search for all terms (AND) by default, so you need to use the term OR between terms to let it know you want to find any of the terms, not documents with all the terms. For instance, in our spiders and climate change example, we might want to use the synonym “global warming” in our search: climate change OR global warming.
3. NOT – If the main idea has a common use you want to exclude, use NOT to exclude that word. For example, if we were looking for information about illegal drug use we would want to exclude prescription drugs from the search results. This is commonly done with NOT or the use of the minus (-) sign: illegal drug use NOT prescription

Putting it all together, we can take a topic example and turn it into a search.

RESEARCH QUESTION: How are birds affected by wind turbines?

The main concepts are birds and wind turbines. Avoid terms like affect (except the noun) and effect as search terms, even when you’re looking for studies that report effects or effectiveness. Those words have too many different meanings.

You could start out your search by combining the two main concepts in a pretty simple search, using AND: birds AND wind turbines

Depending on what search tool you are using, you may or may not want to narrow or broaden things further. Start by thinking of synonyms or related terms that might help. For instance, after you do the above search you may find some articles that refer to “wind energy converters,” which is another term for wind turbines. You might want to expand your search using OR: Birds AND wind turbines OR wind energy converters

You can keep repeating the process with new keywords as you discover them during your research, either creating entirely new searches or adding terms to your existing search using Boolean operators. For instance, we could identify synonyms or related terms for the word “bird” (e.g., names of specific types of birds, scientific name for birds, etc.). How much time you spend devising alternative search terms depends on how much information you find in the search tool and how much information you need.

Here is another example.

RESEARCH QUESTION: Do mandatory school uniforms impact student grades?

The main concepts in this question are 1) school uniforms, 2) grades, and 3) students. Words like “mandatory” and “impact” are not the best choices for search terms, because they are poorly defined (what kind of “impact” do we mean?) and can have many meanings. So, we will leave those terms out of our search, but we will combine the others using AND: School uniforms AND grades AND students

Thinking about synonyms or related terms for these concepts, we might come up with the following:

School uniforms – dress code

Grades – academic performance, scores, testing

Students – children, kids, teenagers, adolescents, elementary school, middle school, junior high, high school

This is just a sampling of the kind of related words we might explore. Once you have some alternative terms, you can do more searches swapping these words out for the original main ideas (e.g., dress code AND scores AND elementary school). There are also other ways to structure searches using either multiple search boxes or using parentheses to group ideas in one search box. These techniques are not difficult, but they are outside the scope of this chapter. If you want to know more, check out this list of advanced search tips from the Smithsonian Libraries.

If you still struggle to identify keywords and combine them effectively, a librarian can give you more ideas.

Tips for Online Searching

Most people know how to use search engines, but not everyone knows some of the more advanced tips for making your searches even more effective. You can find many search tips online, but here are just a few to get you started using Google specifically:

• Use quotation marks to search for words as a phrase. Google will look for those words together in that exact order. For example, if you search “Mexican women entrepreneurs” with and without quotation marks in Google, you get slightly different results. Try searches with and without quotation marks and decide if it makes a difference in your results. (Many library databases also allow you to use quotation marks for phrase searching.)
• Use Google’s Advanced search. You can actually use the Advanced search to look for a phrase instead of using the shortcut mentioned above, as well as a number of other functions like searching only on a specific site, a domain (e.g., .edu, .gov, etc), a language, a region, etc.
• Remember that where and who you are matters when searching. Did you know Google does not show the same search results to everyone? It tailors results based on what it thinks you most want to receive. (There’s a name for this problematic phenomenon: filter bubble.) Your search history, your location, your language, and much more can all factor into your results. There is not always much you can do about it, but be aware of this filtering and consider digging a little deeper so you are at least pushing at those boundaries Google sets up for you.
• Go beyond the first page of results. One way to dig deeper is to go beyond the first few results. You should not assume the “best” info is always at the top.
• Try Google’s other products. In particular, Google Books, Google News, and Google Scholar are great specialized search tools. Sometimes their results will come up when you just search Google.com, but if you want to dig deeper try each individually.

1. Books is for ebooks (and sometimes info about print books) and usually lets you either preview portions of a title or sometimes read the whole thing for free.
2. News is for news articles from around the world. Articles can vary in quality, but it is great for finding current information.
3. Scholar is for academic materials like articles, but not everything here is free. Do not pay for anything though! Talk to a Harper librarian about how you can access what you find on Scholar for free from the Library.

• Try another search engine. Although it feels like it sometimes, Google is not the only search engine! If you feel like you are not finding what you need with Google, or if you just want to check what else is available, try something new. Two popular options are DuckDuckGo and Bing.

Let’s Discuss – Scenario #3

Mikhail is a Harper student, doing a research paper for one of his classes. The research question he has chosen is: Does academic advising impact student retention in college?

He decides to use Academic Search Complete, a multidisciplinary database available at Harper College. At first, he types his research question into the main search box exactly as it appears above and searches. He does not get many results!

Then he remembers that in the visit his class made to the Library, the librarian showed them how to identify the main keywords for searching. After some thought, he identifies the following as the main concepts: 1) academic advising 2) student retention 3) college. He combines those terms, using AND between each, and searches Academic Search Complete again. Success!

Now it is your turn to repeat both of Mikhail’s searches.

1. Click to open Academic Search Complete. (If you are off-campus, you may be prompted to enter your myHarper username and password. If you have trouble logging in, contact the Harper Help Desk.)
2. Enter this exact question word for word: Does academic advising impact student retention in college?
3. Explore the results. How many were there? Did they seem like they might be useful? Why or why not?
4. Now enter this exact search: academic advising AND student retention AND college
5. Explore the results. How many were there? Did they seem like they might be useful? Why do you think this search was different from the first one?
6. What might you do to improve the search even further? Explore around the search results page. List some ways you think you could make the search better (either more results or more relevant results).

Evaluation

Now that you know where and how to search, you can just pull up a list of search results and have what you need, right? Unfortunately, just because a source came up in your search does not mean it is right for your purposes. All sources need to be evaluated. This is especially important for sources you find on the internet, where it is easier to publish with no oversight, but it is important to evaluate the sources you find through the Library, too. Evaluation is not just about whether a source is “good” or “bad;” it is also about determining whether a source is the best choice for your particular information need.

When you begin evaluating sources, what should you consider? The CRAAP test is a series of common evaluative elements you can use. It stands for:

Currency

Relevance

Authority

Accuracy

Purpose

The CRAAP test was developed by librarians at California State University at Chico and it gives you a good, overall set of elements to look for when evaluating a resource. These questions are not a checklist. Instead, think of them as prompts helping you decide where a source lies on the spectrum of quality and usefulness.

Currency

Certain topics require you to pay special attention to how current your resource is—because they are time sensitive, because they have evolved so much over the years, or because new research comes out on the topic frequently. When evaluating the currency of an article, consider the following:

• When was the item written, and how frequently does the publication it is in come out?
• Is there evidence of newly added or updated information in the item?
• If the information is dated? Is it still suitable for your topic?
• How frequently does information change about your topic?

Relevance

Understanding what resources are most applicable to your subject and why they are applicable can help you focus and refine your thesis. Many topics are broad and searching for information on them produces a wide range of resources. Narrowing your topic and focusing on resources specific to your needs can help reduce the piles of information and help you focus in on what is truly important to read and reference. Remember, just because a source came up in your search results does not mean it would be useful for your particular need!

• When determining relevance consider the following:
• Does the item contain information relevant to your argument or thesis? (You may need to read the abstract/summary or skim parts of the article to help you assess.) Will it support your argument or thesis in a way that is important or unique?
• Does the information presented support or refute your ideas?
• If the information refutes your ideas, how will this change your argument?

Authority

Understanding more about your information’s source helps you determine when, how, and where to use that information. Authority can also be contextual—someone who is an expert in one discipline is not necessarily an expert in another discipline. Think about the author’s credentials in relation to your topic to decide whether they are relevant.

• When determining the authority of your source, consider the following:
• What are the author’s credentials (e.g., education, titles, experience in the field, professional reputation, etc.)?
• What qualifies the author to write about this topic?
• What affiliations does the author have? Could these affiliations affect their position?
• What organization or body published the information? Is it authoritative? Does it have an explicit position or bias?

Accuracy

Determining where information comes from, if evidence supports the information, and if the information has been reviewed or refereed can help you decide how and whether to use a source.

When determining the accuracy of a source, consider the following:

• Is the source well-documented? Does it include footnotes, citations, or a bibliography?
• Is information in the source presented as fact, opinion or propaganda? Are biases clear?
• Can you verify information from referenced information in the source?
• Is the information written clearly and free of typographical and grammatical mistakes? Does the source appear to be edited before publication? A clean, well-presented paper does not always indicate accuracy, but usually at least means more eyes have been on the information.
• Sometimes, it is difficult to assess accuracy when you are new to a topic, because you simply do not know enough to spot misinformation. As you learn more in the course of your research, however, continue returning to your sources to consider whether they still seem accurate. Do their conclusions still hold up in the face of all you have learned? Do sources agree on the facts, or do some of them have wildly different information? If so, those differing sources may warrant further investigation.

Purpose

Knowing why information was created is a key to evaluation. Understanding the reason or purpose of the information, if the information has clear intentions, or if the information is fact, opinion or propaganda will help you decide how and why to use information.

• Is the author’s purpose to inform, sell, persuade, or entertain?
• Does the source have an obvious bias or prejudice?
• Is the article presented from multiple points of view?
• Does the author omit important facts or data that might disprove their argument?
• Is the author’s language informal, joking, emotional, or impassioned? Why might they have chosen that language?
• Is the information clearly supported by evidence?

These CRAAP test is not simply a checklist you fill out to get a definitive “yes this is a good quality source” or “no this is not a good quality source.” Sources exist along a continuum. Only by thoroughly exploring the source and thinking about it in the context of your project can you decide whether it is the right source for you.

The answer can also change over time; as you learn more about your topic, you may find that your views on sources evolve. How high the stakes are will also impact your evaluation. Research to settle a bet with your friend is certainly lower stakes than a paper worth 30% of your course grade, and that will have an impact on how you evaluate information.

What should not change, however, is including evaluation in your research process.

Let’s Discuss – Scenario #4

You are doing an internship at a local company. Your boss is in charge of coming up with a new company social media strategy as a way to improve customer relations. She has tasked you with finding some good quality information that she can use to begin learning about best practices and strategies for social media.

You really want to impress your boss with this task because you’re hoping to get a full-time position at the company after graduation! You refresh yourself on how to evaluate sources by reading the attached handout before you start researching.

You will need to do lots more research later, but in your first attempt you found two sources. Evaluate them using the CRAAP test to determine whether or not you will pass them on to your boss. You do not need to read both articles fully—simply explore the titles, check out the authors, read any summaries or introductions, etc. Do your best to answer the questions discussed above.

Source 1: http://prox.harpercollege.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsh&AN=112613175&site=ehost-live (If you are off-campus, you may be prompted to enter your myHarper username and password. If you have trouble logging in, contact the Harper Help Desk.)

Source 2: https://hbr.org/2016/04/social-media-is-too-important-to-be-left-to-the-marketing-department

Once you have explored, would you pass these two articles on to your boss? Why or why not?

What kind of format do you think might be most advantageous, and why? What strategies do you think you might use to find more in the most advantageous format(s)?

Ethical Use of Information

To participate in college-level research is to engage with a chain of debate and scholarship that extends well beyond any individual scholar or researcher’s efforts. As new knowledge builds on or upends older established knowledge, a conversation of sorts develops across time. When we conduct or synthesize the research or writings of others in a college-level research paper, we participate in that conversation. The key holding this vast enterprise together is the notion of citation.

Citation is how scholars acknowledge or point to the work of earlier scholars. Ideally, citation provides a standard means for tracking down the research of others by providing sufficient information about the original source so it can be easily found. Citations typically include things like article titles, journal titles, authors, dates, and publication information. Citations will look different and contain different elements depending on citation style, discipline of study, and the format and nature of the information itself. The purpose is the same: to make the original source of any information you reference easily findable by others. This is our responsibility as participants in research.

Academic Honesty

All schools, including Harper College, have policies about academic dishonesty. Academic dishonesty is a broad category that includes all forms of cheating and falsifying information, but for the purposes of research we are most concerned with one form of academic dishonesty: plagiarism.

Harper’s Academic Honesty Policy says, “Plagiarism is the presentation of another person’s words, ideas, or work as one’s own. It includes but it is not limited to copying any material, (written or non-written) without proper acknowledgement of its source, and paraphrasing another’s work or ideas without proper acknowledgement.”

Harper takes plagiarism very seriously, and penalties for it can include having to redo assignments, receiving a lower or failing grade on an assignment, failing the course, being reported to the Student Conduct Office, and even, in some cases, getting expelled from Harper. Therefore, it is critical that you understand plagiarism and how to avoid it.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism can take many forms, but here are some of the common ones:

• Turning in someone else’s work, word-for-word, and claiming it as your own
• Changing key words and phrases of someone else’s work but mostly keeping the meaning the same
• Mixing copied material from multiple sources
• Trying to cite but doing it poorly (incomplete information, incorrect formatting, etc.)

Citation (including the proper use of borrowed material) is the tool you can use to avoid plagiarism. Citing serves several purposes:

• To acknowledge others for their ideas, words, and images
• To lend credibility to our arguments
• To connect our ideas to other writers’ ideas in our field
• To provide readers with sources that they can use for their own projects

In academic work, citing is done using specific citation styles, which are methods for documenting sources and information. The two most popular, and the ones you are most likely to encounter at Harper, are MLA and APA styles. This chapter will not detail how to cite specifically, but there are many resources available at Harper and on the web that can help you create or gather citations. A few options:

The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University has one of the more famous style guides available online. Their section on research and citing provides a lot of detail and many examples showing how to cite a wide variety of material.

Harper College librarians can help you with specific citing questions. Librarians can connect you with relevant examples, help you track down the information you need to put in your citation, or help you find sources that generate their own citations. Ask at any Library service desk.

The Harper College Writing Center can also assist with citations, particularly with incorporating sources into your writing. It is critical that you consider your sources as you write, not after, because that will help you avoid any unintentional plagiarism. Writing Center tutors will be able to assist you with all stages of the process.

Let’s Discuss – Scenario #5

Kim finds a website written by a university professor that talks about the topic she’s chosen for her assignment. One sentence on the website states the same idea Kim had but in a way that is clearer than she thinks she could write on his own. Kim writes her essay, but she decides to copy that sentence and put it in her paper because it is just so good. She does not put quotation marks or list the name of the professor because it was just one short sentence, but she does include a citation at the end of her paper with information about this source.

Did Kim plagiarize? What did she do right, and could she have done anything better?

Key Terms

Boolean operators A method of searching created by mathematician George Boole that uses the terms AND, OR, and NOT to broaden or narrow a search. Keywords or controlled vocabulary subject terms are combined using these three “operators.”

For instance, AND allows two different but related terms to be searched, which narrows down your search to be more specific. An example would be PTSD AND military, which would search all of the literature first on PTSD, but then limit to only the articles that were written about the military and PTSD.

The operator OR allows you to search two like terms and have the results of both searches appear on the same page. An example of using OR would be to search for PTSD OR Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which would return results that used either of the two forms of the term.

NOT excludes certain terms from being included in a search. In the same vein as the other example searches, you may be interested in finding out only about the Army, but not other branches of military service. A search with not could be PTSD AND Army NOT Navy.

Catalog An online tool in libraries that is usually used to find items owned by the library. Some libraries only list books, but some, like the Harper College Library, also list ebooks and other electronic items in this search interface. You will not be able to search for journal articles in the catalog.

Citation A reference to where you found a specific piece of information or opinion that you have used in your paper. Citations will be found in a references list, bibliography, footnotes, or works cited page and follows a specific format, such as APA or MLA, among others. In-text citations are used to mark the specific information that you are citing in the body of your writing. Citing is important to give authors credit for their work and prevents you from plagiarizing. Another reason it is important to cite is to situate your work within the scholarly conversation happening on a topic and add credibilty to your own argument.

Controlled vocabulary Refers to the way that articles or abstracts are organized in a database by a set lexicon of terms that are defined by the creators. Seasoned researchers will take their keywords from their research topic and look them up in the thesaurus of the database to find out which terms the database vendor has used to tag the concept being researched. In the U.S., the most common controlled vocabulary is the Library of Congress Subject Headings, which is the way the books are organized at the Harper College Library.

Discovery services An online tool in libraries that searches multiple databases and the library’s catalog at once. OneSearch is Harper’s discovery service, and it is available on the Library’s homepage. Discovery services are great tools for finding a lot of research on a topic quickly, but they may bring back too many results from many different fields of study. Additionally, there will be certain databases that are not included in a discovery service, so it is still important to check the subject-specific databases on your topic to make sure that you have not missed any research that may not show up there.

eBook A monograph that appears in electronic format, normally located in a database or on the web. eBooks are normally read online in a browser window or on an e-reader device. Some of Harper’s ebooks can be accessed via the Library catalog, and others are only accessible through OneSearch.

Multidisciplinary database A broadly scoped database that includes articles from many different fields of study, rather than focusing on one specific academic discipline. A multidisciplinary database is a good place to start if you are unsure what fields of study are undertaking research on your topic or if your topic relates to several different disciplines. Many experienced student researchers start in a multidisciplinary database to see what is published on a topic and then move into a subject-specific database that is tailored to their major.

Subject-specific database A database that is scoped to include only journal articles, book chapters, citations, and sources from one particular academic discipline.

Scholarly or peer reviewed literature Scholarly literature usually appears in journal articles. It is written for an audience of other researchers in the field and it usually builds on the past research of others. The process to get a scholarly article published is rigorous and includes peer review undertaken by other experts on the topic.

Popular publication Examples of popular literature are magazines and newspapers. Articles in a popular periodical will be written for the purpose of entertaining or informing a wide audience. You can find examples of popular periodicals on newsstands and in book stores. They are usually written by journalists or staff writers, though sometimes subject matter experts will write specific articles on their field.

Trade publication Articles in trade publications are written for an audience of professionals that are already working in the field. They will usually include relevant trends, news, and reports on successful projects that other professionals may want to duplicate on their own.

Journal article A written work that appears in a periodical that is published on a regular basis, whether that is monthly, quarterly, annually, etc. Journal articles are normally written by scholars, researchers, or experts in a field and they are peer reviewed by other researchers in order to ensure accuracy. Articles will usually have a methods section and a bibliography or works cited that situates the current information in the body of previous research on the topic. The writers are normally not paid directly for their contributions. Rather, they are publishing on the topic because they are contributing to the formal scholarly conversation on a given topic.

Keywords A method of locating library literature in a database that requires you to search using broad, user-defined search terms to find all of the materials on a topic in that search tool. Keyword searching is the type of library search most closely aligned to the way we naturally speak or write; look for the main ideas of your topic sentence or research question to determine your keywords. Keywords may be separated by Boolean operators.

Magazine article A written work that appears in a popular periodical that you would find in a bookstore or on a news- stand. These articles are written by professional journalists for a mass market audience and will be written at a lower reading level than a scholarly journal article. The purpose of a magazine article is to inform and often to entertain the reader. There will usually not be citations in this type of article.

Newspaper article A brief article or description of a current event that appeared in a daily publication. Newspaper articles are written by professional journalists and do not normally contain citations. They are written for the purposes of informing the general public about happenings in the world. Traditionally, newspapers are published in print, but nowadays some newspapers are published both in print and online or even exclusively online.

Reference materials Usually located in a special collection of non-circulating print books or online, reference materials include encyclopedias, dictionaries, and atlases. Most reference works include a summary of information taken to be factual, rather than analysis or new research on a topic. These works are a great place to start your research, as you will discover related terms and accumulate background information on your topic. You can locate reference materials through the Harper College Library catalog, OneSearch, or using some of the library databases.

Research question A research question defines what you want to learn in the course of your research. It is an important step between selecting a general topic and settling on a specific thesis, and it guides the choices you make during your research. It should be clear, concise, and phrased as an answerable but debatable question.

Attribution

Some of the information in this section (Information Literacy and Source Documentation) was adapted from the following Creative Commons licensed open educational resources:

Choosing & Using Sources: A Guide to Academic Research by Teaching & Learning, Ohio State University Libraries

Information Literacy Concepts: An Open Educational Resource by David Hisle and Katy Webb

The Information Literacy User's Guide: An Open, Online Textbook by Deborah Bernnard, Greg Bobish, Jenna Hecker, Irina Holden, Allison Hosier, Trudi Jacobson, Tor Loney, and Daryl Bullis