Databases

Databases

Keyword Searching

It’s time to begin traveling into the realm of electronic searching, a land much more complex and (frankly) exciting than you ever imagined when you first Googled something and actually got what you were looking for. So pack your bags. On the plus side, by the end of our exploration you’re sure to be a better and wiser human being.

What’s a Database?

Chances are that you fancy yourself as a computer genius and the word “database” doesn’t sound like “root canal.” But this doesn’t mean you’ve learned how to search a database quickly and efficiently, coming up with the exact results you need most of the time. Then again, you may not yet have warmed to computers, nor do you think of them as friendly creatures ever ready to help you, like a big Saint Bernard in avalanche territory. For you, “database”may well be a bad word, a frightening word. If that’s your situation, let me give you a soothing message: “Fear not.”

Actually, databases are everywhere, and I guarantee you’ve already searched one or more though not necessarily with all the skill you needed. When was the last time you used a phone book, a dictionary, a library catalog? All of these are databases. Here’s a definition:

A database is any collection of data that can be retrieved using organized search procedures.

Phone books are databases of names, addresses and phone numbers. They are set up alphabetically, so that we can use an organized search procedure (involving the alphabet) to help us retrieve the data we need. Just to confuse us, however, the Yellow Pages are organized by subject, then by alphabet. Most common print databases are easy to search. But when databases are in computerized form, a whole new set of problems emerges:

• Computer databases are generally much larger than print ones.

• There are few common conventions for searching computerized databases, so every new database is a new experience.

• Unlike a phone book, you can’t really browse a computer database well. It’s a black hole into which you are calling: “Please send me the data I want!” Computers, being inherently unintelligent, don’t always understand what you want, and frustration sets in quickly. If you use the wrong search technique or poor terminology, the blessed machine may tell you that the data isn’t in there when you know full well that it is.

Many people today are hotshots on computers. They can make the keys sing, the mouse roar and the CPU hum. But few of us understand database searching well enough to do it effectively, let alone efficiently. You may know how to use a computer, but disaster will befall you if you don’t understand how to search databases. Worry not, however. You’re about to discover a few things.

Keyword Searching

The keyword has become the main tool of research in today’s electronic database environment, and many people assume that keywords are their friends. That’s not exactly the case. Have you ever had “friends” you trusted only to a certain point, because you had to tell yourself to watch your back when you were around them? You knew they appeared kind and could be helpful, but they could just as easily betray you or do you harm. That’s the keyword—useful, handy, but potentially a backstabber. Keywords represent the Wild West of database searching—bold and exciting, but risky as can be.

Database Basics for Keyword Searching

We start with the principle that every database is made up of words. Computers, though inherently unintelligent when it comes to real thinking, are experts at recognizing words. To understand how keyword searching works, you need to know that most databases use descriptive records to identify and show the features of the data they are dealing with. For example, every time a new book is added to a library, it is cataloged by creating a catalog record, which might look something like this:

Title: Google and the myth of universal knowledge: a view from Europe
Author: Jeanneney, Jean Noël, 1942– .
Publisher: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, c2007.
Description: xvi, 92 p. ; 23 cm.
ISBN: 9780226395777
Series: Digital formations ; v. 6
Subjects: Google (Firm)
Library materials—Digitization.
Electronic information resources—Europe.
Information organization.
Digital libraries.
Web search engines—Europe.
Internet industry—Europe.
Internet—Social aspects.
Call No.: ZA4234.G64 J4313 2007

This is, in essence, a description of the main details about this book that the database needs to have available in order for you to identify and find the book. When you search the database by keyword, you will be looking for significant words in this record. Now, imagine that there are thousands of records, and you’re interested in finding a list of books about the social ramifications of the Internet. You should be able to think of important words (= keywords) and input them into a search box. The database search program will then look for those words in each of the records in the database and will download to your screen any records that have the words you’ve asked for.

Rule #1:With keyword searching, what you type is what you get. The computer cannot interpret your request or give you the next best solution (though some may search on a few synonyms). All it can do is identify the words you ask for and give you the relevant data. Garbage in, garbage out.

With many keyword searches, you can type part of a word, then add an asterisk (*) or sometimes a question mark (?), and the computer will look for every word that begins with the letters you typed. E.g., interact* will ask the computer to search for interact, interacting, interaction, even interactivity. This is called "truncation."

You can also sometimes do forward truncation in which the asterisk goes at the beginning (rare) or middle truncation (“wildcards”), in which truncation is done within a word (e.g.,Wom*n).

Even given the variations allowed through truncation, keyword searching demands a whole lot of precision. The search function in the computer database will only find the exact thing you want it to find. If you mistakenly type intract* instead of interact*, the search function will give you data with words intractable, thus spoiling your whole day and making you grouchy in social environments. So do what your mother told you and learn to spell. Get it right the first time.

Boolean Searching

Many years before computers, a man named George Boole invented a mathematical system that enabled people to visualize the combination of various classes of things. The computer folks have taken his system into the world of database searching in order to formulate searches where two or more terms are used. Let’s look at some of the basic commands used in Boolean searching:

The OR Command

Suppose that I’m looking in a database for information about cars. I realize that a keyword search will pull out all information that has the word “cars” in it, but some people use the term “automobiles.” How can I tell the database search program to look for both words at the same time and give me data whether that data uses the word “cars” or the word “automobiles?” In a situation in which I am searching for synonyms—different words that mean the same thing—I use the OR command. Let’s visualize it this way:

That is, “Database Search Program, please give me everything on cars or automobiles, I don’t care which.” So you will get all the data with “cars” in it, plus all the data with “automobiles” in it. Both words don’t have to be in your results. Either word will do.

In a keyword search in a computer catalog or some other database, your search may look like this:

Cars or Automobiles

Another situation calling for an OR search might be that in which two concepts are closely related, and you suspect that finding data on either of them will further your overall goal. For example, in doing a search for “psychoanalysis” you might also want to search for the father of psychoanalysis— Sigmund Freud. If you leave off the “Sigmund” (because he is usually referred to just as “Freud”), you can formulate a search like this:

psychoanalysis or Freud

With an OR search, you typically get a lot of “hits”, that is, pieces of data brought down to you out of the database.

Rule #2: An OR search is usually for synonyms or for keywords that are already closely related. You use it to anticipate the various ways something might be described or approached so that you don’t have to do multiple individual word searches.

The only alternative to doing an OR search is to do separate searches on each of your search terms, then try to compile the various sets of results. OR lets you avoid the pain of such an experience.

The AND Command

One of the most profitable uses of keywords is in combining topics to narrow down a search. For example, if you wanted to look at the problem of educating homeless youth, a keyword search could be formulated to produce very precise results.

Let’s visualize it with a diagram first. If you’re searching for the relationship between homeless youth and education, you don’t want every piece of data on homeless youth, nor do you want every piece of data about education. You want the data that comes from having homeless youth and education intersect. Thus:

Your formulated keyword search will look like this:

homeless youth and education

A little tip: Be very careful not to add unnecessary words to AND searches.

Rule #3: In an AND search, always look for the fewest number of terms requiredto get data that is on target with your search goals. The more unnecessary terms you add, the more you risk screening out good data that does not use those terms.

Rule #4: A keyword AND search is used to search for data that relates two or more topics or concepts together. The data found will show the effect of the relationship between/among these topics.

An AND search is a limiting kind of search. It asks the search program to provide data only when that data contains all the keywords linked by AND. Thus, you should expect that an AND search will give you fewer hits than if you had searched each keyword on its own.

Rule #5: AND searches will narrow or limit your topic. Thus you can expect that you will not get as many “hits” with an AND search as with an OR search.

Nesting ANDs and ORs

[See third

print edition]

The NOT Command

If I’m back to looking for information about cars, but I’m not interested in any car made in Europe, a NOT search is what I need (Please don’t send me cards and letters asking why I have a problem with European cars—it’s a long story). With this search, I want to tell the computer to give me everything about cars

but no data about European cars. Here’s how to do a NOT search:

(cars or automobiles) not Europe*

What I’m saying is that I want data about either cars or automobiles as long I don’t have to deal with European cars or automobiles.

Exceptions to the Above

[See third print edition]

Controlled Vocabularies

Metadata - Definition and Use

[See third print edition, Chapter 4]

Controlled Vocabularies

A few years ago, as people started sharing things on the WWW (photos, favorite bookmarks, etc.), folksonomies started to develop. A folksonomy is simply a user created method of labeling items so that you or anyone else in your circle of friends of colleagues can use these labels to find your items. A couple of examples are Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/) for photos and del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) for Web site bookmarks. The labels or “tags” used in these sites can be displayed as “clouds” of links to actual data. Users can search across one another’s collections, pulling out, for example, favorite pictures from Japan or bookmarks to sites on ballroom dancing.

One big problem, though: The tags are user generated. This means that consistency goes out the window. One user tags his photos of New York with the term “newyork.” Another uses “nyc,” or “newyorkcity” or “ny” (most tagging systems demand that you tag with only one word or close up spaces). This means that if I search across the collection for pictures of New York, I need to know all the relevant tags that are being used for the subject, or I will most certainly miss a lot of items just because I didn’t use all the right tags.

In some ways, it would be great if some dictator webmaster actually issued a set of standardized tags and insisted that everyone use them instead of making up their own. Hmmm … Actually that’s the answer. A set of tags that is uniform so that all the pictures of Japan have to be tagged “JapanPictures,” not “JapaneseVacationPictures,” or “PicturesOfJapan.” That way, you would get all the pictures of Japan that are in the collection.

Too bad I can’t claim credit for the idea. The Library of Congress in 1898 was faced with the prospect of creating a new method of cataloging its large collection. As part of the process, the librarians determined that the only way to be sure all books on a particular topic could be identified was to standardize a system of subject headings (tags?) that would be used in the descriptive record (metadata) related to each book. They created records containing these subject headings along with other metadata (authors, titles, etc.).

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Consider the following descriptive record (metadata) for a book

LDR: 00793nam 2200265Ia 45x0
005: 20030610113341.0
008: 030610s2003 nyua 001 0 eng d
020: $a 0595271960
035: $a ocm52399619
090: $a LB2375 $b .B33 2003
100: 1 $a Badke,William B., $d 1949–
245: 10 $a Beyond the answer sheet: $b academic success for international students/$c William B. Badke.
260: $a New York: $b iUniverse, $c c2003.
300: $a v, 152 p. : $b ill. ; $c 24 cm.
500: $a Includes index.
650: 0 $a Academic achievement.
650: 0 $a Foreign study.
650: 0 $a College student orientation.
650: 0 $a Student adjustment.
650: 0 $a College students.
650: 0 $a Students, Foreign $x Education (Higher)

If you look at the 650 fields just above, you will see terminology like:

Academic achievement.
Foreign study.
College student orientation.
Student adjustment.
College students.
Students, Foreign $x Education (Higher)

Each of these is a Library of Congress subject heading related to some aspect of the book’s subject matter. How did these subject headings originate? Quite simply, the Library of Congress (LC) in Washington, DC predetermined the terms by which most topics in the world of information would be called and then organized these terms in alphabetical lists. Some subject headings were easy: dogs are DOGS, sunflowers are SUNFLOWERS, and so on. Some were more difficult: What do you call senior citizens? LC chose AGED, much to the outrage of senior citizens.

Television faith healers are HEALERS IN MASS MEDIA. Why? Because LC said so. That’s the point with controlled vocabularies. These vocabularies are created by people “out there” who then control them and refuse to allow you to change them.

The fact is that you can’t have it both ways. You can either choose your own search terminology (as in keywords or tagging), in which case you can’t be sure you’ll find everything, or you can use standardized terminology not chosen by you. If you use standardized terminology, you have less flexibility, but you are more likely to find most of what the database has to offer about the topic you are seeking. Thus:

Rule #1: With controlled vocabularies, you have to use the subject terms provided by the system. You might not like the terms chosen, but they are what you’ve got. No variations are allowed; you have to use the subject headings in the forms provided to you.

How does a controlled vocabulary work? Armed with a set of predetermined subject headings, catalogers (creators of metadata records) decide which heading (or headings) to assign to a particular chunk of data. In the case of LC, every time they get a book to catalog, they write a description of the book (i.e., the catalog
record), which then becomes metadata, and to that metadata is added one or more controlled subject headings.

So a book entitled Them TV Preachers may have the subject heading HEALERS IN MASS MEDIA assigned to it. A book called Active Seniors in Today’s World may be labeled with the subject heading AGED. Note something very important here. The book Them TV Preachers did not have any of the actual words of the subject heading in its title. The title told you the book was about TV preachers. It said nothing about healers or about mass media. The same was true for the second title—Active Seniors in Today’s World—the term “AGED” is not to be seen anywhere in the title. Why, then, were they given the subject headings they received? Because some intelligent librarian sat down with these books, determined what they were about, and then assigned the closest subject headings from the already existing controlled vocabulary list. Thus:

Rule #2: The actual wording in a title of whatever you are searching for is not important for controlled vocabularies. Subject headings are assigned on the basis of somebody’s judgment as to what the item is actually about. The title words can be the same as words in the subject heading or radically different.

Consider the advantages: I have 5 books with the following titles:

Terminal Choices
Choosing Life or Death
Euthanasia
The Practice of Death
The Right to Die

All of them are about mercy killing or euthanasia. You might not have guessed that fact by looking at the titles, but the intelligent LC librarian has looked over these books determined that they are all about the same topic and assigned them the same subject heading to all of them: EUTHANASIA.

Controlled vocabularies are a good solution to the problem of retrieval. How can we ask the right question so that the database will deliver to us the information we need? If we wanted a list of books about euthanasia, it would be nice to have a search tool that would enable us simply to type a predetermined word or phrase into the computer and get back a list of all the euthanasia books regardless of the wordings of the actual book titles. This is what a controlled vocabulary is designed for. Most of the books on euthanasia in a library will be retrieved just by typing in the subject term EUTHANASIA.

Rule #3: Use a controlled vocabulary as a search tool when you want a collection of data on the same subject regardless of what the data actually says about itself.

But let’s be clear about one thing—controlled vocabularies are “controlled” in the sense that someone other than you has determined what they will be. You as the user can’t mess with them by changing their words or rearranging their structure the way you can with keywords. You use controlled vocabularies; you don’t create them and you can’t fool with their form.

Rule #4:Messing with controlled vocabulary wording or form is strictly forbidden. Subject headings are created by someone other than you, and they can’t, in most cases, be manipulated or turned into keywords.

Let’s see how the LC Subject Headings controlled vocabulary system works in practice. The Library of Congress provides subject headings for its own books, but it has also conveniently issued its list of approved headings so that all of us can use their system. Most libraries in North America have chosen to do just that, so that your library’s subject headings are likely derived from the Library of Congress.

Your library may have a print edition of Library of Congress Subject Headings as a set of large red volumes. Below is a mock-up of what you might see on typical page from the guide. On the right are the subject headings or alternative headings. On the left is a description of what you are seeing on the right. If you have trouble distinguishing left from right, look for italics (left) or non-italics (right):

Working the Angles—Identifying Controlled Vocabularies

Controlled vocabularies can involve more than subject headings. Names can be tricky in databases—Am I “Badke, William” or “Badke, Bill?” Thus many databases also have controlled vocabularies of names, by which they standardize the form of an author’s name so you can find everything by that author in the database. Titles of books or articles have their own controlled vocabulary built in. A title takes a unique form in its choice and order of words so that titles tend to be standardized automatically.

But subject headings, whether they are in a library catalog or some other database, are a challenge to identify.

Library Catalogs

Library catalogs often do not have guides to subject headings embedded in them, which is why you have to use the Library of Congress Subject Headings volumes or the online version, described above. But there is another way to identify subject headings. As a purist, I hesitate to tell you this, because it’s not foolproof, and you may end up missing headings you could have used. But here it is: Starting with a keyword search in a library catalog may be the best way to find relevant subject headings.

Here’s how it works. First do a keyword search in the library catalog, using words you think might appear in relevant books on the topic you are dealing with. Find a book that is right on topic and click on the title of the citation to it to open up the full catalog record. For example, you might be writing on Pacific Island societies, so you use these terms in a keyword search. You discover in your result list the ideal book and open up the full record:

The growth and collapse of Pacific island societies: archaeological and demographic perspectives/
Author: Kirch, Patrick Vinton Rallu, Jean-Louis
Publisher: Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, ©2007.
ISBN: 9780824831349
Subjects: Ethnology—Oceania.
Ethnology—Hawaii.

Look at the line that says “Subjects.” There are a couple of official, authorized forms of the Library of Congress subject heading for this concept Ethnology—Oceania and Ethnology—Hawaii. They may not be the subject headings you would have thought of, but that doesn’t matter. What you have with these subjectheadings are tools to find all the other books on the topic, usually just by clicking on the hyperlinked subject headings in the catalog record. So this method is relatively simple: Use a keyword search to find one book on your topic. Open up the citation to get the full catalog record. Identify the LC subject heading(s) used for this book and click on its (their) link(s) to search for other books like the first one.

Other Databases

There are a many databases out there that use controlled vocabularies. Here are some clues to finding their subject headings systems:

• A term commonly used is “Thesaurus,” that is, a guide to subject headings that not only identifies authorized subjects but also can lead you to broader, narrower or related terms that are also authorized. Sometimes there is a “scope note,” that is a definition of what is covered by a certain subject heading.

• At other times in a database you may see a link to “Subjects” or “Descriptors,” which mean the same thing.

• In connection with the options above, or sometimes separate from them, you may find a “browse” function. “Browse” generally involves working with controlled vocabulary terms (subjects, authors, titles, etc.) from alphabetized lists of headings.

Blowing Away the Information Fog

Blowing Away the Information Fog

Hierarchies

I know this is starting to look technical, but it’s not really. Let’s start with a brief look at how knowledge is organized. Put quite simply (because I’m not capable of much beyond simplicity), every bit of knowledge has a context within which it fits. The way the whole of knowledge is organized is from broad categories (at the top) to narrow categories (at the bottom). The broad categories help to define the meaning and boundaries of the narrow ones. Let me illustrate. Here’s a question: Can you define the following word?

ROCK

“Sure,” you say. “It’s a hard object that comes out of the ground.”

To which I answer, “How wrong you are! Don’t you know that ‘rock’ is a verb?” My definition, a symptom of my growing age, is that the only rock worth anything is the rock I do in my rocking chair."

“I’m not wrong,” you retort. “You’re wrong.”

To which your friend standing next to us says with a smirk, “You’re both wrong. It’s music. Classic Rock is real music, and I’d rather be listening to it than wasting time listening to you argue about word meanings.”

What’s the problem here? Why can’t we agree on a definition for one word with only four letters in it? The reason is simple: If I say, “I’m planning to take a whole evening to rock in my rocking chair,” you know that my definition of ‘rock’ is something like ‘a back and forth motion.’ If, on the other hand, I say, “The rock that went through my window was two inches across,” you know that ‘rock’ is now a noun meaning ‘a hard substance taken from the earth.’

Words by themselves don’t really mean anything for certain. They only have a definite meaning when you put them in a context. Words get their meaning from the sentences surrounding them. In turn, sentences become understandable within their paragraphs, and paragraphs make sense within the larger context of the complete document. The important word here is “context.” Meaning is derived from context, and without context we have only confusion. So what? How do meaning and context relate to research? Exactly like this: All data exists within one or more information hierarchies (contexts). Let me illustrate with the word “rock.”

“Rock’ is a sub-class of more comprehensive categories. For example, “rock” may be a sub-class of modern music, right alongside other sub-classes like “adult contemporary,” “elevator music,” and the compositions of John Cage. “Modern music” in turn is a sub-class of the larger category of “music” along with other sub-classes like “classical,” “baroque,” etc.What we end up with is a hierarchy. Each higher grouping is broader than the one below it. But notice that “rock” is capable of having several different hierarchies attached to it, depending on the meaning we give to the word. It can also be a sub-class of “hard substances in the earth” or of “verbs indicating motion.”

All data comes within a context. Without context the data cannot tell us what we need to know. Few concepts, however, are bound within a single context but are capable of belonging to a number of possible contexts.

Let’s now move into an area that better resembles a research topic. Take something like the Roman emperor Constantine. Depending on how you approach him, he can exist within a number of contexts (= hierarchies):

You can deal with him as a sub-class of “Roman emperors” alongside other sub-classes like Julius Caesar and Nero. “Roman emperors” in turn are a subclass of “Roman history”, which in turn is a sub-class of “Ancient History.” Alternatively, you can deal with him as an important figure within the larger subject of “Early Christian Church History,” since he was the emperor who affirmed Christianity so that it could eventually become the official Roman religion. Or you can discuss him within the higher class of “History of Church and State,” since his marriage between empire and the Church led to many issues related to the wisdom of creating such unions. Each of these hierarchies leads to a different approach to the same topic.

All information is hierarchical. The rule is simply this:

Rule #6: In research, data is only meaningful when you understand the hierarchy (context) within which it is found. You must always know where your data fits within the hierarchy.

What higher class (context) does your topic belong to in the particular situation in which you find yourself? Are there other hierarchies your topic could belong to? Are there sub-classes of your topic that could become factors to consider?

Clustering Search Tools

[See third print edition]

Library Catalogs

Books tend to create fogs of misunderstanding, because they’re blunt instruments. In order to write a book, you need a topic broad enough to be covered in a couple of hundred or more pages, but you need enough focus to avoid it becoming multi-volume or looking superficial. Thus finding a book specifically on your narrowed down topic may well be a challenge. If you can’t find a book on Abortion, you might find one on Medical Ethics. If you can’t find a book on Constantine, you might find a book on Roman Emperors or Roman History of his era or Early Church History. Generally, you need to assume that few books will be exactly on your topic. That is why strategies are needed. Library catalogs have been around forever, it seems, though electronic versions of them have been widely used only over the past twenty-five or so years. When you search a library catalog, you are searching the data record created for each book, a record that includes the following, among other things: Author, title, publisher information, format, description, subject heading(s), and call number. This is where it can get tricky. Library catalog searching interfaces differ widely from one another, so you need to “read” them in order to navigate them well. Some common interface formats:

• A catalog that offers an initial keyword search box and an advancedsearch link so you can move to a more sophisticated search screen.

• A catalog that allows you to specify (through a drop-down, a list, or a choice of buttons) what type of search you want to do (e.g., keyword, title, subject heading, etc.).

• A catalog that defaults to an advanced search with several boxes that enable you to specify type of search and then shape it with Boolean operators. In this case, a basic search link will be available as well.

Here is a three-part collage of various types of catalog you may encounter:

Making the Catalog Work for You

If your topic is reasonably standard, you will probably do best with a controlled vocabulary subject heading search. It’s safer in that you know you will find most books that are available on the topic. One problem, beyond sometimes finding too many books to deal with, is that you may only need a portion of the information found in each book. For example, if your research question is, “How close to attainability is B.F. Skinner’s utopian vision found in his book Walden Two?” you might well find that there are few books available specifically on Walden Two, and you are going to have to do a controlled vocabulary subject search on Skinner, B.F. (Burrhus Frederic), 1904—and then find material on Walden Two within books describing his thought. Of course, you’ll also need to look at Walden Two itself.

If your topic is not a standard one or if it combines a couple of subject disciplines (such as the influence ofWalden Two on the 1960’s hippy movement), you may want to go for a keyword approach. Here are a few warnings, however:

• Keywords tend to target specific and/or non-traditional approaches to topics. The library you are using may not have enough diversity to meet your particular quirky need.

• Keyword searching, while it may narrow down your quest to exactly what you want, is a very inexact science. You have to input the right word(s) configured in the right way, and you are highly dependent on the actual terminology of titles in the collection.

• Be sure you don’t use too many keywords at once. Start with one or two, and if that doesn’t give you what you want, try one more. Rarely, unless you are nesting ANDs and ORs, will you need more than three.

• Never forget that, in an AND search, every time you add a term you eliminate data from your results. This may be good if you have too many hits, but make sure that the data you are eliminating is not crucial. It’s better to have more results and have to sift through them to find what you need than to have a smaller set of results that doesn’t meet your requirements.

Above all in catalog searching, use lateral thinking. Thinking hierarchically could help you. Ask yourself one or more of the following questions:

• What hierarchy (broader subject area) or hierarchies could this topic be a part of?

• If I can’t find a book specifically on my topic, what topic is next above it in the hierarchy?

• If one approach is not working, what are other ways that I might look at the topic? (i.e., what other hierarchies could potentially contain the topic?)

Making Your Way Through the Periodical Maze

Journal Databases

J

ust when you thought that finding books was trouble enough, someone is sure to suggest to you that there’s another whole world of research materials crying out for attention—journals. Actually, the whole category I’m thinking of is broader than that. Librarians, ever the stuffy folks we are, call them “periodicals,” that is, materials that arrive in the library periodically, as opposed to a book that arrives only once. Included in the category is everything from newspapers to popular magazines (or e-zines) to scholarly journals. But I’m going to call them journals anyway, because the primary readers of this book are doing academic research that focuses on journals. Some Background on the Journal Scene. Before we get to journal databases, let’s clarify what makes journals different from books. The most significant difference is that you can’t catalog a journal like you catalog a book. When a librarian gets a new book for the collection, the book is cataloged (i.e. has a catalog record created for it) and put on theshelf. After that, there is nothing to do but sign the book out and check it back in until it falls apart. The cataloger’s job is done. But journal issues keep on arriving every week or month or quarter or year. By definition, they are periodical. You can’t just create a descriptive record for them once and for all like you can a book, because they keep changing as more issues are added to the growing collection. While it might be possible for a librarian to assign a subject heading to each article in each journal as it arrives and then to create a database so that you could find articles on any given topic, it just wouldn’t be practical. No librarian has the time to create a separate database of all the library’s journal articles. The field of journals is governed by several categories, some of which are showing rapid change: Popular vs. Scholarly [more detail in 3rd print edition] Print vs. Electronic [more detail in 3rd print edition] Pay vs. Open Access [more detail in 3rd print edition] For searchable databases of open access journals, go to Open J-Gate (http://www.openj-gate.com/) or Directory of Open-Access Journals (http://www.doaj.org/). Introduction to Journal Databases Even thinking of using journals in a research project may produce in you a shudder of horror. You imagine sitting down in front of piles of printed journals, thumbing through each one in an anguished quest for something (anything!) on the “The Implications for Generation Y of Max Weber’s Approach to the Sociology of Cities.” Hours later, in bitterness of heart and soul, you will emerge, red-eyed, with one article that is only vaguely relevant. Journal research used to be done that way when your grandfather was a wee lad in school. Now things are very different, due to the development of journal databases. These databases are created this way: Indexers sit down in front of piles of print journals or their electronic equivalents (often related to a specific subject discipline, such as psychology or history or religion) and create a metadata record for each article. The metadata is loaded into the database, thus making it searchable. By doing a search, you can generate a list of articles from various journals that are relevant to the subject you are studying. Approaching a journal database means first being able to “read” its interface. The interface is what you actually see on the computer screen when you search for the data in a journal database. It includes the screen display, search methods, and so on. Interfaces change constantly. Data doesn’t. What this means is that the screen may look different the next time you use the database. The instructions on use may be different. Even the methods you need to follow to search the index may be different. The data inside the database is the same, but the means you use to extract it may be brand new. How to Read an Interface [more detail in 3rd print edition] Go over any instructions on the screen. Start with a keyword search and identify 2 or 3 results that look like they are relevant to your research question/thesis. Click on the titles of these relevant articles, one by one, to open the full records. Are there suggested subject heading links beside or above the list ofresults? Are they hyperlinked? Look for a “Thesaurus,” “Subjects,” “Browse Subjects,” or “Indexes” link. If you are going to search by keywords, what sorts of Boolean operators are in use in this database? Is phrase searching allowed? Try a search on a broad basis first, perhaps inputting a subject heading or only one keyword. If you get more than about 500 “hits” (citations to individual articles), look for a means to refine or narrow your search by adding more words. Let’s start with an example [see 3rd print edition] Some Tips on Journal Article Citations A journal article citation is simply a description of an article with sufficient information to help you find it. While the format of a citation may vary, this is the information usually provided: Badke, William. “Can’t Get No Respect: Helping Faculty to Understand the Educational Power of Information Literacy.” The Reference Librarian 43, no. 89/90 (2005): 63-80. Here it is broken down: Badke,William.—Author of the article. “Can’t Get No Respect: Helping Faculty to Understand the Educational Power of Information Literacy.”—Title of the article. The Reference Librarian—Name of the journal in which the article is found. 43—Volume number of the journal. Each new year gets a new volume number. no. 89/90—Issue number. In this case, this is a double issue. (2005)—Date the article was published. 63-80—Page numbers of the issue in which the article is found. Journal Databases with Electronic Full Text [more detail in Rather than simply listing citations to various journal articles, full text databases add the actual text of the articles in electronic form—usually as HTML or PDF or both, the former looking like a re-typed document, and the latter looking like a photocopy of the original print version. Increasingly, journal databases are going to PDF only.
Approaching Journal Databases—Tips and Hints [much more detail in 3rd print edition] Be prepared for frustration Read the Interface Be aware that databases tend to be something of a black hole You send in a request, and the database tells you what it found (or didn’t find). The database search program will rarely tell you what you did wrong. Resist the urge to fill the search box with words Think about staging (faceting) your search Look for controlled vocabularies and advanced searches Think before you search Retrace your steps Be prepared to go back and figure out what you did wrong or how you could get better results. When in doubt, read the instructions Remain calm Sometimes problems arise because you’re using the wrong database Check out the possibilities of interlibrary loan

Other Resources You May Not Have Considered

Other Resources You May Not Have Considered

Sometimes you get desperate. All the normal research avenues narrow down to footpaths and then disappear entirely. You’re running out of time and you havenothing to show for the hours you’ve spent. Now there’s a need for innovative action. This chapter will try to steer you in new and potentially fascinating directions. Then, this being the most loosely organized chapter in the book, we’ll also look at some other helpful resources, and then try out a couple of case studies of actual research projects.

Seeing Where We’ve Been

Before we launch you into new sources for research data, it’s probably a good idea to rehearse where we’ve been. Maybe you’ve missed some important resources. Let’s make a strategies list so that you can go back over your research methods to this point and check out possibilities that may have eluded you the first time you went through.

The Strategies We’ve Covered (Now for the First Time in One Place):

• Get a working knowledge of your topic

• Assess the research topic, narrow it, come up with an analytical research question and suggest a preliminary outline

• Do a search in a library catalog, using keywords and controlled vocabularies as needed

• Do a search for journal articles

• Make a judicious search of Internet resources.

Now let’s consider some options you may not have thought of:

Full Text Reference Tools

There is a growing number of reference works that are available in electronic format or which have a CD that accompanies the print version. Each library will have its own collection of such tools, often available through your library home page or catalog.

On the World Wide Web, the availability of reference sources that use traditional production and editing procedures is pretty limited. Here’s a wildly eclectic list of examples chosen at a whim for reasons I no longer recall:

• C

One of the great untapped resources for research is ERIC. No, this is not a linebacker on a sophomore football team. ERIC stands for Education Resources Information Center, a clearinghouse that makes available studies, reports, curriculum helps, etc. produced by educational institutions.

But don’t think of it just as an educational database. Educators are concerned about virtually anything that might be related to education, from the effects of early poverty on adult job performance, to the ramifications of teen suicide. This means that a wide range of topics in the social sciences are covered, as well as quite a few areas of the humanities.

One further bit of information which sometimes confuses users—as ERIC grew, the database added a journals component to enable people to identify journal articles in education. The confusing part is that ERIC itself does not provide the electronic full text of these journal articles. You will need to locate them yourself. Thus you actually have two databases in one. To distinguish ERIC Documents from ERIC journals, the former were designated ED—so that each ERIC Document has a code number that looks like this: ED213562. ERIC Journals are designated EJ, as in: EJ498231. You can find both EJs and EDs in a single search, though it’s possible to specify a search for only journals or only documents.

ERIC amazingly is available freely on the Internet and includes much full text content at no charge as well.

Here are some of the key searching features:

Don’t ignore ERIC. It is a very good resource for many kinds of research. The fact that you can access its database and much of its full text on the Internet makes it all the more helpful.

Government Documents

Various governments produce vast hosts of information which can be found in libraries, can be purchased, or can be discovered free on the Internet (depending on what the information is). Publications put out by governments cover potentially every area of life. The only problem is that they are notoriously difficult to find. If you are in a library that has government documents, rely on your reference librarian to guide you through the maze.

For US government information on the World Wide Web, you can go to . This site can help you find materials by agency or by topic. It even offers you guidance to locate documents in libraries. (In case the address goes out of date, the site name is “FDLP Electronic Collection.” Google that phrase, and the site should come up.) For state government information, try the portal produced by the Library of Congress

If you are blessed enough to live in Canada, as I do, the Internet site you want is: http://www.canada.gc.ca/main_e.html.

F

or other country governments, try: http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/law20.40.00/ Certain libraries are designated as depository collections that receive print forms of government information. To locate the depository library near you in the US, go to http://www.gpoaccess.gov/libraries.html, and in Canada to http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Depo/table-e.html. For other countries,Google the following: depository libraries countryname.

Doctoral Dissertations

It sounds so intriguing, so right—if you want the best cutting edge research on a topic, why not locate a few doctoral dissertations? But the realities can be a mixed bag.

The searching tool for dissertations is ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Database, an electronic tool available in larger libraries but very few small ones. It’s fully searchable and you can easily locate citations and abstracts(summaries) of doctoral work on your topic. ProQuest offers with its databases the full text of close to a million dissertations, for those libraries that can afford to provide this feature. For libraries that can’t, or for older dissertations not available in full text, you may be able to use interlibrary loan (not always successful) or buy the dissertation yourself from ProQuest. There is a PDF tutorial at

Bibliographic Managers

Bibliographic Managers enable you to collect citations in specified folders and generate bibliographies in most any format you want. Some offer the option of adding a plug-in to your word processing program so that you can create automatic citations and bibliographies without having to type in the information yourself. Let’s take a quick look at each of them:

Consulting with Friends, Mentors and Librarians

We live in a highly consultative age, and the tendency to run our ideas past other people is pretty strong. There are real and obvious reasons why trying out aspects of your project on others can bring fresh perspectives and help you make early or mid-course correctives.

What are Friends Good For?

Meetings of minds are usually helpful, at least in theory.

Consulting Professors

If you are going to consult with a professor, have a clear question in mind and focus on being brief and to the point. Professors should be consulted if you are unsure of what to do or what is being demanded, if you have thought of an approach to an assignment which may not be exactly what the professor is asking for, or if you are stuck somewhere in the research process and need advice to help you get unstuck.

Encountering Librarians

Research shows that many students have a very limited perspective on what librarians can do for them. Actually, most librarians know more about information technology than either you or your professors do. If you need to use almost any database, a librarian is likely to offer more help than anyone else can. And if you are working on a highly specialized topic, a librarian has the skills to work with that topic and actually help you advance beyond where you are. Librarians are amazing people. Consult them frequently. They don’t usually bite.

Case Studies in Research

Case Studies in Research

It’s all very well to read about the theory of research, but hands-on experience teaches us that we live in a complex world. Methods that may have worked perfectly well in one research project are disastrous in another. Keen minds and brave hearts are needed if we want to succeed in actually carrying out a research project. The moment you’ve been waiting for all along is here. Let’s do some research!

“Teenage Suicide”

While the rates for teenage suicide dropped in the 1990s and early 2000s, they are growing again. For a sociology class, you’ve been given the above topic, and now you’re dismayed at the possibilities. Should you prepare:

• A statistical analysis of the prevalence of the problem?

• A study of why the rate is growing?

• An analysis of the social situations of those who commit suicide?

• A study of suicide prevention methods?

• Any one of a dozen other possibilities?

Before you go too much farther, it’s best to get a working knowledge. Let’s consider a few reference tools, then move on to consider our approach:

Reference Sources.

I turned to William Damon, ed. Handbook of Child Psychology. In volume 3 there is an interesting summary ofthe work of a researcher named Michael Chandler who shows evidence that suicide can result from teenagers losing “persistent identity over time.” He observes that “Even temporarily losing the narrative thread of one’s personal persistence … leaves adolescents especially vulnerable to a range of self destructive impulses against which others remain better insulated.” In balance to this view, I sought out a few more reference articles and built my knowledge both of the prevalence and characteristics of the problem.

Topic Analysis.

How about something like this: If Chandler is correct that adolescent suicide is linked to loss of persistent identity over time, can the increasingly disruptive nature of modern life be seen as a factor in the growth of suicides among teenagers?

A preliminary outline might look like this:

Introduction—the problem of a growing rate of teenage suicide
I. Chandler’s persistent identity model in relation to other possible models.
II. Analysis of increased life disruption among modern adolescents in light of the growing suicide rate.
III. Comparison of modern life disruption with the elements described in Chandler’s model.
Conclusion: The value of Chandler’s model in explaining the increase in teen suicides.

Book Search [more detail in 3rd print edition]

For a book search you have some options:

• You could do a controlled vocabulary Library of Congress Subject Heading search under the heading: Teenagers—Suicidal behavior.

• You could do a controlled vocabulary subject search, using Chandler’s name as a subject heading to find any books written about him and/or his views.

• You try a Boolean keyword search such as Chandler AND suicide. Using a keyword search that covered the whole catalog record, I discovered two essays (in books) by Michael Chandler directly on the personal continuity issue.

• You could do an author search for books by Michael Chandler.

Journal Database Search.

In searching for journal articles, the first question might be: “What subject discipline are we dealing with?” It could be sociology or psychology or social psychology.

Let’s try PsycINFO. The first search should try to identify articles by Chandler on the topic using the “Authors” option. Now, if you want to find articles about Chandler and his views on identity, try something simple—a keyword search on chandler and identity. How about searching him as a subject heading?

ERIC

ERIC should be the kind of database ideally suited to a topic like this one. A search of Chandler and suicide finds us only three relevant citations. Let's try adolescen* and suicide and identity.

Summary

Where are you now? You’ve identified books and articles related to rates of adolescent suicide and particularly to Michael Chandler’s work. Probably the only thing remaining would be to dig into the sources you’ve found to discover who else agrees with Chandler and to find out whether or not there are dissenting opinions. Clearly there is more than enough research information out there to provide you with the resources you need. Your goal, remember, is to discover whether or not Chandler’s theory is an adequate explanation of the growth in teen suicides.

Learning How to Read for Research

Learning How to Read for Research

It’s all very well to amass an enormous bibliography and have all your sources scattered artfully on your desk. But if you’re assuming that your essay or research report is now as good as written, you’re a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic. Getting the research materials is only half the battle. Now you have to read them and evaluate them. This chapter majors on the joys of reading and note-taking.

Reading for the Connoisseur and the Glutton

With a tantalizing heading like the one above, you may want to head for the nearest cafeteria. But read on—food for the mind is better than French fries. Our generation is very big on what is commonly called “escapist fiction.” This is the kind of book that makes no claim to be great literature with deep themes but does promise to take you out of yourself and into a far more exciting world.

The advantage of a thriller is that it gives you a way to escape. You can sit back and let it happen without pondering or analyzing too deeply. Let the skilled thriller writer feed you the adventure until you scream for mercy. Escapist fiction is for gluttons.

I do not, however, call a well-crafted mystery novel “escapist” in the same sense. The writer of this kind of work dares you at every point not only to figure out who did it, but why and how whoever did it did it. In other words, such a writer does not want you to swallow the novel whole (as in a thriller) but to read it with discernment, pausing to think over clues with reserve and intelligence. The well-crafted mystery novel is for connoisseurs.

Where is all this leading? Simply to this basic statement: Research is not for gluttons.

Consider the problem you face: You have twenty-five scattered sources and seven Web sites waiting to be read. They comprise 3,423 pages in total. At an average rate of one page every two minutes, this will take you 6,846 minutes to read, or, in more familiar terms, 114.1 hours. If you skip classes for two weeks (or take a vacation from your job) and read 8.15 hours per day, you will have it all read. But wait a minute (even though you have none of these to spare)—I haven’t allowed you the time you need to take notes on what you’re reading nor to ponder its value. You’d better plan on three weeks.

Before we get too far into the realm of the ridiculous, I think you can see that there is no way you will be able to read and take notes on 3,423 pages for one research project. The approach that works so well for devouring spy novels—gluttonously reading without much thought—is going to sink you when you try to read research materials. There has to be a way to determine what’s important and what’s a red herring (or a blue elephant).

Let me show you the connoisseur’s approach to reading:

Be Ruthless

You may not like what I have to say now, but I do have to say it. Any book or article you read for research purposes must be used and discarded as quickly as possible.

You need information. The source you are reading has information. The problem is that it has too much information that is not relevant to your research topic. Thus you need to use every skill you have to sift quickly through the material you don’t need and find the material you do need.

You are writing a paper that is due, along with two others, in seven days. Be ruthless. Read what you need and abandon the rest. It’s your only hope.

One big note of caution: I am not urging you to read out of context. You have to read enough of an author’s work to have a good idea of his or her main message. It’s all very well to be efficient and discerning (the connoisseur) rather than a mindless sponge (the glutton), but be very sure you have grasped not only what the author is saying, but why the author is saying it.

Get to Know the Material without Reading It All

No, this is not permission to do skimpy research. This is an attempt to show you how to zero in on what you need without missing anything important.

Here are the steps to take, first for books, then for articles:

Books [More detail in the third print edition]

• First, at the start of the process, have a good look at the title page, preface, foreword, and introduction.

• Second, check out the table of contents. This table forms the skeleton upon which the body is hung, the keystone that supports the building, the street signs that give meaning to the metropolis, the—but why go on? The point is simply that the table of contents provides you with the basic structure of the book in its proper order.

• Third, have a look at the index.

• Fourth, be sure to give the book a run-through, even if you are only going to use a part of it. If you fail to do so, you may miss completely the overall intent of the volume and thus misunderstand what you are reading in one portion of it. A run-through includes: Reading opening and concluding portions of each chapter, considering the subheadings in the body of each chapter, going over any summary or conclusion chapter at the end of the book, and possibly looking up a book review or two if the book is confusing or potentially controversial.

• Fifth, when it comes to reading the appropriate portion(s) of the book, be a connoisseur of the argumentation, not a glutton who does not evaluate what s/he’s eating as long as s/he’s got food in front of him or her. There is only one way to read when you are doing research—by asking constant questions.

Articles [More detail in the third print edition]

With a journal article, or an essay within a book, you lack some of the more familiar signposts—tables of contents, indexes, sometimes even subheadings in the text. To add to the problem, the writer may argue a complex point over several pages without stating a conclusion until the last moment. How do you get a grasp of the article’s message in short order and make good use of it?

• First, find an abstract (a summary of the article) if you can locate one quickly.

• Second, watch for key propositions. Key what??? A key proposition, despite its strange name, is a simple concept. A key proposition is a statement of what the author believes to be true.

• Third, check out the author’s conclusion at the end of the article carefully.

• Fourth, if the article you are reading still gives you few clues, read the whole thing.

A Final Word on Analytical Reading

We have been talking hard realities here—too little time and too much to read. Remember that books and journal articles are sources of data. Develop those skills that will help you extract data with the greatest speed and efficiency. But beware of quoting an author out of context because you did not read enough to get the author’s overall message.

Evaluation of Research Resources

Much of what we might call “evaluation” is part of analytical reading—trying to discern what the author is saying and how credible the author’s arguments appear to be. But I do want to add something about the overall evaluation process.

Evaluation has to do with determining the following: [More detail in the third print edition]

• The qualifications of the author.

• The biases of the author. Bias is not necessarily a bad thing, because none of us are 100% objective. It may, indeed, be the bias of the author that is most important to you. What is important here is that you identify the biases of authors so that you can walk into their works with eyes wide open.

• The level of opinion as opposed to evidence.

• Whether or not the material is relevant to the problem you are addressing.

A great resource for evaluation clues is

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Evaluation.html

Note Taking

You may know some of those rare people who never take notes on the data they are discovering in research. Instead, they gather all their books and articles around themselves just before they start writing their first draft, then cite and quote their sources simply by hauling books out of the pile and looking up appropriate passages. Such people, of course, have photographic memories and the organizational skills of Noah loading the ark. Or they are really only using one source for most of their data while occasionally referring to others to cover up the limited nature of their research. Perhaps (heaven forbid), they’re writing their research paper out of their heads and using the occasional book or article citation only as some sort of weak signal to the reader that they did some actual research.

For most of us, it’s crucial as we read that we distill out the essential things we are going to have to include in our research paper. We don’t have the minds nor the stamina to retain everything, unaided by notes, at least not once our research goes beyond four or five sources.

Generally I recommend taking notes from one source at a time, covering everything in source (book, article, etc.) before moving on to the next one.

One of the biggest problems most students face is that they take too many notes that will later go unused. The key to this problem is to have a good research question and preliminary outline as soon as possible in the research process. If you are one of those people who only discerns your outline for the first time while you are proof-reading the final copy of your paper, you have probably wasted a lot of time taking notes that ended up in the round file beside your desk. After all that needless effort, your paper is probably not very good anyway, because its structure was never planned. If, on the other hand, you have a fairly good idea of what you want to accomplish with your research project, you are less likely to take notes on irrelevant information.

Once you have a clear vision how you want your research materials to help you deal with your question, you next have to decide on a note-taking style.

The Determined Photo-Copier [More detail in the third print edition]

For some students, note taking is easy. Armed with fourteen dollars in dimes, or a charged up copier debit card, they simply photocopy or print everything that looks important, take all 140 copies home, and assemble an essay. Would that most of us could afford this method.

A bit of advice here:

• If you are using the copier or computer printer, make sure that you have recorded the author, title, place of publication, publisher and date for every book or article from which you’ve made copies or print-offs (author, title, journal name, volume number, date, and page numbers for journals).

• Use a highlight pen on your copies or print-offs as soon as you have made them.

• Recognize that you have probably interacted with your material at a superficial level. Go over your photocopies in detail.

The Note-Book Computer Whiz [More detail in the third print edition]

With a notebook computer and a portable scanner like the C-Pen or Wizcom QuickLink Pen, you can input large amounts of text without ever photocopying any of it. Inputting is generally not much of a problem, but retrieval is.

If you can identify key words, you can use your word processor “Find” function to locate those words. You can open several windows of material at the same time and compare them right on screen. You can even buy a specialized scholarly word processing system which will allow you to use advanced file and search functions as well as helping you with the final paper and formatting your bibliography by whatever style manual you are using.

One word of caution: Because it is often so easy to input notes, you need to be careful that you keep your notes to a minimum. Simply pulling everything you’ve been reading into computer files is probably counterproductive.

The Quoter [More detail in the third print edition]

Some still prefer a low-tech approach with paper and pen or, lacking a portable scanner, they are using their own fingers to type material into computer files. Often the plan is to get down information that is verbatim, that is, take direct quotations. There are some advantages to copying material word for word into your notes, and (inevitably) some disadvantages.

Advantages

• You won’t have to go back to the book or article later on if you need a suitable quotation. It will be right in your notes.

• A quotation method can give you greater accuracy.

• The mere act of copying helps you get to know the material more intimately.

Disadvantages

• The process can become fairly laborious. It’s easier to photocopy.

• You must be very careful to quote enough to catch the context.

The Summarizer [More detail in the third print edition]

This person reads a chunk of material, then summarizes it in his or her own words. The point is to condense several pages into a paragraph of notes or a paragraph into a sentence.

Advantages:

• This method is quicker than quoting.

• The process of summarizing forces you to think about the material and make it your own.

Disadvantages:

• The method does not work well if you are dealing with difficult material that is hard to condense.

• You will have to go back to your book or journal article if you find later that you need a quotation.

• You have to be very careful that you understand the things you are reading. If you misunderstand, you have no way of checking for accuracy later on, other than going back to your source material.

The Paraphraser (not recommended in most cases) [More detail, including examples, in the third print edition]

The difference between summarizing and paraphrasing is that the former condenses material while the latter rewrites each sentence in the reader’s own words.

Possible Advantage:

This method can be helpful if you are working through difficult material.

Why, in Most Cases, Paraphrasing is a Bad Idea:

• While sometimes recommended by professors, this method leaves you particularly open to a charge of plagiarism (see the end of this chapter), since you are still reproducing the writer’s work, thought for thought if not word for word.

• In fact, people who paraphrase tend to change far too little of the original to qualify the result as plagiarism-free.

• The method is laborious. Not only do you have to rephrase each sentence, but your notes will be as long as your original source, maybe longer.

Avoid letting paraphrased material appear in an actual research paper you have written. Paraphrased material only puts you at risk. Summarize instead.

Which Method is Best?

You can use any or all of these methods, except paraphrasing, to advantage. May I suggest that you keep all of them in your toolkit, using each as is appropriate.

Further Notes on Note-T

aking [See third print edition] A Gentle Warning about the Horrible Crime of Plagiarism [More detail in the third print edition]

Just to end the chapter on a cheery note, let me caution you about the academic crime of plagiarism. Plagiarism, to put it simply, is passing on someone else’s work as your own.

Plagiarism is an academic crime because it is the theft of someone else’s creativity, because it gives the impression that someone else’s words or ideas are your own, and because most astute professors catch offenders quite easily (even those who skim their papers off the Internet), and then feel hurt that they have been lied to. This often results in anything from a zero for the paper to expulsion from the institution.

8.5.1 Why Get Stressed about Plagiarism? [More detail in the third print edition]

With easy access to the WWW and to online full text journals, plagiarism is increasing. A lot of students struggle with why plagiarism is such a big deal. We download music all the time, and the WWW is full of free information. What’s the difference between downloading a song and downloading text to put into a research paper? The following may provide some answers:

• There is a difference between free access and the ability to claim that you are the author of the information you copied from the Net.

• Intellectual property is a big deal in Western society. To be able to write something and put my name on it is something I value. When someone else takes my material and puts his/her name on it, my intellectual property has been stolen.

• 
  When you take someone else’s words or ideas and pass them off as your own, you rob those words of their power.

• 
  Research writing is a dialogue. As you address your research question, you know that there are other voices out there who have already expressed points of view about possible answers to your question (the sources you are using—books, articles, and so on). Research involves dialoguingwith those sources, agreeing with some, disagreeing with others.

8.5.2 About Getting Caught [More detail in the third print edition]

Just at the time when it’s easier than ever to steal electronic text and paste it into your research project, passing it off as your own, it’s easier than ever to get caught. If you plagiarize an author’s unique ideas, chances are your professor already knows what those unique ideas are. But even if you steal text, your professor can catch you very easily.

So it’s getting easier to be caught at the plagiarism game. The results are pretty awful. If your professor is really merciful you’ll need to rewrite your paper. Normally the paper gets a zero, with no chance for a rewrite. But at many institutions it doesn’t stop there. The plagiarism goes on your academic file, you may be given a failing mark, and you could even be suspended or expelled. Overall, plagiarism can look li

ke an easy way to let someone else do For a PowerPoint on plagiarism: http://www.acts.twu.ca/LBR/plagiarism.ppt

.

For an article expanding on my approach to plagiarism, see Badke,William. “Give Plagiarism the Weight It Deserves.” Online 31.5 (Sep. 2007): 58-60.

8.5.3 International Students and Plagiarism

International students face some unique challenges with the plagiarism issue. In many cultures, information is seen as the property of the community more than it is the property of the individual. In fact, when other people in a community copy or freely use the information of a great scholar, they are honoring that scholar. If information is seen as communal property, using someone else’s words or ideas does not appear to be a serious problem.

Yet even in societies where information is communal, it remains wrong to pretend that other people’s words or ideas are your own. Even information that belongs to the community still had an author. If you leave the impression that you are the author, you are committing fraud.

Unfortunately, as well, international students who struggle with English are more likely to be caught when then plagiarize than native English speakers. Why? Because the style of English in the plagiarized material is so obviously different from the style of an English as a second language writer. It is not that international students plagiarize more often than domestic students. It is that international student plagiarists are easier to detect.