LIBR 100
Spring 2008
Information Research
Syllabus
Thomas Hunter, Rm. 402
Instructor: Tony Doyle, tdoyle@hunter.cuny.edu
Office hours: By appointment (Rm. 412 HE)
Course
Description
Since the arrival
of the internet a chief problem for students and researchers alike has become
not too little information but too much. This embarrassment of riches means
that it is more important now than ever to have the skills for homing in on
relevant and credible sources. Information Research strives to meet this need.
We will cover the
following topics: (1) Electronic research: selecting a manageable topic; choosing
an appropriate database; identifying keywords; combining keywords with the boolean operators and, or,
and not; the different types of
databases (full text, index and abstract, and index). (2) Reading citations.
(3) Using Refworks as a bibliographic and citation
tool. (4) Magazines and scholarly journals. (5) Books: How is searching for
books by subject in a catalog different from searching for magazine or journal
articles by subject in a database? Why do books remain a valuable source for
research? (6) Evaluating sources for credibility and bias: print,
organizational websites, Wikipedia, and blogs. (7) Print reference sources. (8)
Plagiarism and academic integrity. (9) Copyright and information ethics
Course
Goals.
At the end of the
course you should be able to:
1. Know how to
identify an appropriate research topic.
2. Find relevant
print and electronic sources on your topic.
3. Use the free
web effectively.
4. Evaluate
sources, both print and electronic, as to authority, reliability, and bias.
5. Cite your
sources correctly using Refworks.
6. Know what
constitutes plagiarism.
Required text:
Arlene Rodda Quaratiello,
The College Student’s Research Companion,
4th Edition
Recommended text:
Myrtle Bolner and Gayle Poirier, The Research Process: Book and Beyond, 4th Edition. (On reserve)
Blackboard site:
This course has a Blackboard site. You are expected to check the site in time
to be prepared for your next class.
Assignments:
Quizzes and
participation: 10%
Midterm: 20%
Homework: 30%
Final project:
Oral Component: 10%
Written Component: 30%
Homework. There will be five short assignments; no
handwritten work accepted.
Final project
Written component: Choose a controversial topic related to
the Bush administration. Here are some general topics you might choose:
* The evidence
for weapons of mass destruction in
* The treatment
of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison
* Climate
change/global warming
* Some aspect of
the
* No Child Left
Behind
* Embryonic stem
cell research
* Hurricane
Katrina
* The
* The Bush
environmental policy
* The controversy
over intelligent design/creation vs. evolution
* Some aspect of
the Bush Administration’s foreign policy
Other topics are
also possible, subject to my approval.
You will be
expected to give an informed and accessible discussion of your topic and your
sources. You should evaluate your sources and explain how you located them. You
will need to discuss the following sources
* One scholarly
book
* One peer
reviewed article; has to be at least 7 pages long
* Two articles
from two different magazines chosen from the List of Conservative and Liberal
Journals (in BB, under Handouts), excluding Time,
* Two newspaper
articles from two of the following: The
New York Times, The Guardian, and The Wall Street
Journal (at least 1000 words; no editorials) using Lexis-Nexis,
Focus. The paper should focus on a discussion of your research
strategy. In it you should address the following questions: What keywords and
subject terms did you use? Which ones worked? Did you have to refine or revise
your topic? If so, why? What databases did you use?
Which yielded the best results? You should also discuss your sources. Did they
deal with your topic? Were they biased? What were the authors’ credentials?
What bearing did these credentials have on the credibility or objectivity of
the source? How was your strategy for finding a book different from your
strategy for finding articles? Do not quote from your sources. Also, you don’t
need an introduction or a conclusion. You can start right off discussing your
sources.
All the sources
that you use have to be available here at Hunter. If you have trouble finding a
source, let me know. Please don’t go to the reference desk.
Purpose: to choose a plausible topic, refine it, locate credible
and relevant sources, and to defend the choices that you’ve made. Avoid
editorializing.
Audience: A reasonably well informed person who,
say, reads The New York Times or
listens to NPR daily but who lacks detailed knowledge of your topic.
Length: five pages,
double spaced, one inch margins, 12 pt. Times Roman font. Citations
in MLA format. Use in text citations when paraphrasing. See the
Due: May 21, at the beginning of class
Oral component: Between April 16 and May 21 everyone will
be expected to talk about their project for 5 minutes. I will ask people to
sign up for a time during the first class. Your discussion should include: (1)
the databases you used to find your magazine, journal, and newspaper articles,
with an explanation about why you chose them, and (2) a discussion of the
following sources that you’ll be using in your final paper: One peer-reviewed
article, one magazine article, one article from either The New York Times, The Guardian,
or The Wall Street Journal, and one
scholarly book. For this you will need to hand in an outline of at least twelve
components, along with a bibliography of the sources you discuss in your
presentation. You can refer to this outline during your presentation, but you
shouldn’t read from a text. You should use visual aids in your presentation,
either by demonstrating your searches live or by using Powerpoint.
Assessment
of final project. In your oral presentation I will be looking for lucid coverage of
the themes mentioned above. Your essay will be graded on the overall quality of
your presentation: (1) the clarity of your prose, (2) the coherence of your
essay, (3) the extent to which you address the questions mentioned above in Focus, and (4) the
quality of the sources that you have chosen.
Schedule
January 30: Information, choosing a topic, and
database searching
1. Pre-test
(diagnostic)
2. Information
a. How is information produced?
b. How does it find its way to you?
c. How do we assess its credibility?
d. Peer review
e. Primary vs. secondary sources
Homework (due Feb
5 at 10AM in the electronic drop box in Blackboard): Choose a topic for your
final project and write three questions you want answered about that topic.
February 6: Research topics
1. Choosing a
viable research topic
2. What is a
database?
a. Indexes
b. Indexes with abstracts
c. Full text databases
3. Choosing the
right databases:
a. General databases vs. specialized
databases
b. Scholarly databases vs. non-scholarly
databases
4. Boolean
methods and proximity operators
5. Subject
indexing/headings; thesauruses
6. Searching with
controlled vocabulary
Recommended: Bolner: pp. 23-26
February 13: Search methods and databases
1. Field
searching vs. full text searching
2. Working with
specific databases
a. Academic Search Premier
b. Lexis-Nexis
c. Specialized databases
3. Reading
citations
4. Annotated
bibliographies
5. Writing
annotations
Reading: Quaratiello, ch. 2; 68-77; ch. 6, read the sections on the following databases: Ebscohost, Lexis-Nexis, Jstor,
and Net Library; General Searching Strategies (tutorial; http://library.hunter.cuny.edu/tdoyle/Boolean_files/v3_document.htm)
Recommended:
Bolner, pp. 59-69.
Homework (due
February 20). Write a 150 word annotation on the article handed out in class
today. Your annotation should discuss the main theme(s) of the piece as well as
identify any bias that the article betrays. For an example see Sample
Annotation in Assignments in Blackboard.
February 20: Using Refworks
to construct a bibliography and to cite sources
Homework (due
February 27): Provide citations and 150 word annotations for two articles from
two different magazines included on the List of Conservative and Liberal
Journals (in Handouts, on Blackboard), excluding Time, Newsweek, US News, World Report, and Business
Week. In addition you can use
Februrary
27: Citations; magazines,
journals; political bias or orientation in magazines
1. Periodicals:
scholarly, trade, and popular sources
2. Scholarly
communication and peer review
3. Determining
whether the article has a bias—for instance, political or religious—or
orientation
4. Plausibility
of information
5. Older vs.
newer articles
Recommended: Bolner, pp. 29-31; 225-31
March 5: Books
1. CUNY+
2. Strategies for
finding books vs. strategies for finding articles
3. Library of
Congress classification
4. Deciphering
catalog records
5. Using Library
of Congress subject headings
6. Scholarly
books vs. trade books
Recommended: Bolner, 79-80 (top); 81-84; 157-60; 359
Homework (due
March 12): Provide citations and annotations for two peer reviewed articles
that are relevant to the topic of your final project. Your annotations should
justify your choice of articles. The annotations should be 150 words each. Your
articles must be indexed in one of Hunter’s subscription databases. Articles
must be at least 7 pages long, excluding references or endnotes.
March 12: Books (cont.); print reference sources
1. Call numbers
2. Books as
sources of bibliographies
3. Net Library
4. Finding book
reviews in databases
5. Strong sources
for book reviews: The
6. Conventional
(print) reference sources (time permitting)
a. Atlases
b. Statistical
c. Biographical
d. Specialized (subject) encyclopedias/dictionaries
e. Directories
f. Handbooks
g. Quotation sources
h. Chronological sources
i. Bibliographies
Quaratiello, chapter 5
Raimes, The
Open Handbook, p. 402 (eres)
Recommened: Bolner, pp.
30; 173-83 (top); 186-92
March 19: Lexis-Nexis; evaluating scholarly
sources; research on the web
1. Using
Lexis-Nexis to find newspaper articles
2. Other features
of Lexis-Nexis
Homework (due
April 9): Provide citations and annotations for one scholarly book that is
relevant to the topic of your final project. Your annotation should justify
your choice. The annotation should be roughly 250 words.
April 2: Citation counts and evaluating websites
3. Evaluating the
quality of peer reviewed articles using Web of Science
a. Citation counts
b. How to use a citation index
c. Citation counts in Google Scholar
4. Research on
the web
a. Credibility: the internet vs. print
b. Authorship; sponsoring institution
c. Authority
d. Purpose
e. Quality of writing; tendentious language
f. How recent?
g. Can factual claims be corroborated?
h. Domain
i. Search directories
Recommended:
Bolner, 157-61
Hunter’s Reading/Writing Center’s handout on web evaluation at http://rwc.hunter.cuny.edu/reading-writing/on-line/evaluating-web-sources.pdf.
Also:
Burbules, Nicholas. “Paradoxes of the Web: The
Ethical Dimensions of Credibility.” Library
Trends 49.3
(2001): 441-47, paragraph 1.
Fallis, Don. “On Verifying the
Accuracy of Information: Philosophical Perspectives.” Library Trends
52.3 (2004): 463-466, paragraph 2; 470 (bottom)-472 (bottom).
Vedder, Anton and Robert Wachbroit. “Reliability of Information on the
Internet: Some Distinctions.” Ethics and
Information Technology 5.4 (2003): 211-15.
Homework (due
April 9): Provide citations and annotations for one scholarly book that is
relevant to the topic of your final project. Your annotation should justify
your choice. The annotation should be roughly 250 words.
April 9: Web
evaluation continuted and Wikipedia
1. Sample
websites
2. Wikipedia
a. Compared to Britannica
b. As a source for research
3. Discussion of
the reading on Wikipedia
---. “
---. “The Wiki Principle.” The
Economist 378.8474 (April 22, 2006): Special Section, 14-15.
Giles, J.
“Internet Encyclopedias Go Head to Head.” Nature
438.7070 (December 15, 2005): 900-01.
Reed, Brock. “ ‘Wikimania’ Participants Give
the Online Encyclopedia Mixed Reviews.” The
Chronicle of Higher Education 53 (September 1, 2006): 62.
Rothenberg,
David. “How the Web Destroys the Quality of Students’ Research Papers." Chronicle of Higher
Education 32 (August 15, 1997): A44. (eres;
password: doyle100)
Recommended:
Poe,
Schiff, Stacy.
“Know it All.” New Yorker 82 (July
23, 2006): 36-43.
April 16: Test; presentations;
1. Test: unless
noted, you’ll be responsible for everything that we’ve covered through April 9.
2. Three
presentations
Homework (due
April 30): Provide citations and annotations of 150 words each for two
newspaper articles from two the following three newspapers: The New York Times, The Guardian, or The Wall Street
Journal.
April 30: Presentations; Information ethics I
1. Presentations
2. Information
ethics: Copyright, intellectual property, fair use, and plagiarism and academic
integrity
Hettinger, Edwin.
“Justifying Intellectual Property.” Philosophy and
Public Affairs 18.1 (1989): 31-32.2; 47.4-49.
Bolner in Handouts on BB
Raimes in Handouts on BB
May 7: Presentations; Information ethics II
1. Presentations
2. Censorship and
intellectual freedom
3. Privacy
Frické, Martin, Kay Mathiesen,
and Don Fallis. “The Ethical Presuppositions behind the
Library Bill of Rights.” Library Quarterly 29.4 (2000): 470.2;
473.3-77.4; 478.3-79.1.
The Library Bill of Rights (http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/statementspols/statementsif/librarybillrights.htm)
Recommended:
Fallis, Don. “Epistemic Value
Theory and Information Ethics.” Minds
and Machines 14.1 (2004): 101-17.
Garoogian, Rhoda. “Librarian/Patron
Confidentiality: An Ethical Challenge.” Library
Trends 40 (Fall 1991): 216-33.
Moor, James. “The Ethics of Privacy Protection.” Library Trends 39.1/2 (1990): 76.3-80.1.
May 14:
1. Presentations
May 21. We’ll meet from 11:30 till 12:20.
1. Presentations
2. Post-test
(diagnostic only)
3. Final papers
due