In this presentation we will cover research strategies to optimise the way you are looking for and at information. Some of this is may be very familiar to you so it will be good revision, some of it less so

These are all strategies I wish I knew much, much earlier in my researching career because they will save you so much time

Searching EBSCO

Looking at a text -- audience and purpose

How to Highlight

Note taking using Cornell Notes

After this presentation we will find an article on EBSCO, read and highlight and take notes with Cornell System, so I hope you're excited!

What is EBSCO? EBSCO is a database of hundreds of thousands of Australasian texts including newspaper and journal articles (including peer reviewed), radio, tv and lecture transcripts, e-books, images and video.

Can anyone list some reasons why we could use EBSCO and not google? I think you may have covered this content in year 9

In this information rich age, the problem is not finding information but filtering it

EBSCO is curated, better quality resources rather than just some random blog and has tools so we can narrow our search to better suit what we are looking for so we aren't drowning in information

we can narrow our search to peer review

access to sources that cost us money behind a paywall such as academic journals

Google allows websites that have paid to be listed first

Google uses search engine optimization strategies

Google is s business designed around advertising revenue, EBSCO is a business designed around libraries buying their software by being great for searching

We have a libguide all about google here

http://libguides.lowtherhall.vic.edu.au/lrc/google

We can easily access EBSCO on the LRC website:

http://libguides.lowtherhall.vic.edu.au/lrc

On the LRC's website, we can just scroll down to LRC databses to find EBSCO. (Demonstrate on website)


EBSCO is also called the ANZ Reference Database

Just to make sure we are on the same page (as it were) EBSCO defaults to Basic Search so let's talk about this quickly

We'll talk about Advanced Search shortly

Search history -- save you time looking at previous results

Let's enter a search term and click search

Now we can see our results page.

We have 2,562 results which is still too many.

Results will be automatically filtered by "relevance" which is to say how often your search terms are used in the text

So we can can scroll through all those results OR we can use some filters to get a really targeted option. These filters are called limits

On the right, we can see options to change what order results appear in

Rather than relevance we can choose newest to oldest which will allow us to choose only recent items

Along the left side of the page

Limit results to full text, peer reviewed (check everyone knows what that means)

And we can create a search using publication date -- eg no results from prior to 2010

Or maybe you're interested in immigration policy in Aust only during 2007? We can narrow date focus very quickly and easily

We can also filter by Source Types, for example newspapers, magazines etc

When we select an item it will bring up an abstract, a short blurb about our article. this will allow us to decide whether this is really relevant to us or not, how long it is, whether it has pictures etc

We can select "HTML" Full text on the side to read the article

Now that we're all feeling so confident with basic search let's move onto advanced:

Watch short video about advanced search

in brief, there is lots more info on the libguide

So now we have found some fantastic articles and it's time to think, WHO MADE THIS TEXT AND FOR WHAT PURPOSE?

When someone produces a piece of work they do so for a reason and for a group of people

That doesn't mean that we need to look at everything as a terrible piece of propaganda, but rather, that text exists within a cultural context and its important to remember that.

Cultural context means that anything produced is going to be informed by the biases both conscious and unconscious of the author

This is why such a good idea to use EBSCO rather google because we are getting results from newspapers, academic journals and other reputable sources rather than from someone's blog

When you have your article we can read and highlight it -- important here to remember not to be like the CIA redacting an email

Only highlight key ideas such as dates, people places, repeated or stressed terms -- the who what when why and how

meant to be an aid to memory not adult colouring -- although we do have colouring books in the LRC

There is no point in highlighting everything like the CIA censoring a memo

Try and use highlighting to help you engage with the material or as an aid to you memory

Cornell Note taking try to get to learn actively rather than passively

Cornell System -- student views and thinks about notes many times -- conducive to better learning

3 section set up:

On the left key questions and main ideas (you will do this after the notes are completed)

The right: key words and ideas, such as important dates, people, places, Repeated and stressed info, and ideas and brainstorming written on the whiteboard

At the bottom write a summary of your notes in your own words