Systematic Inquiry: HOD 1700

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Systematic Inquiry HOD 1700

• Sharon Gray Weiner, M.L.S., AHIP
• weiner_at_library.vanderbilt.edu
• 322-8096
• September 9, 2003

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Objectives

• To identify resources for community needs
  assessment project
• To improve strategies for searching resources
• To identify criteria for evaluation of resources

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Research Strategy

• Define your topic. Write your topic clearly and
  concisely in a sentence or two.
• I need to find information on the community
  needs of the Woodbine area of Nashville.

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• List as many terms and synonyms (keywords)
  related to your topic as you can think of.
• Community Needs Woodbine
• Health Nashville
• Income Tennessee
• Recreation Davidson County
• Day care
• Housing

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• Identify the resources that might be relevant to
  your topic and rank them according to anticipated
  usefulness.

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Hint

• Consider what type of information you need, then
  decide on what resources
• Currency?
• Peer-reviewed?
• Newpaper?
• Research study or opinion?
• Popular or scholarly?
• Data?
• How authoritative?

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• Systematic Inquiry Resources http//www.library.va
  nderbilt.edu/peabody/peabody/instruct/hod1700perki
  ns.html

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Types of Resources http//www.library.vanderbil
t.edu/
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• Bibliographic databases
• Give citations to articles
• General subjects
• InfoTrac
• ProQuest
• UnCover

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• Specific subjects
• Medline
• AgeLine
• PsycInfo
• HAPI Hispanic American Periodical Index

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• Full text journals
• Emerald, Kluwer, JSTOR, ScienceDirect
• http//www.library.vanderbilt.edu/heard/central/el
  ecaggr.shtml
• Combination bibliographic/full text
• ProQuest
• InfoTrac

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• Data sourcescensus
• NewspapersTennessean, National Newspaper Index

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• Online catalogs
• AcornVanderbilt libraries
• Heard Library, Peabody (formerly Education)
• Kudzusouthern universities
• AthenaNashville libraries
• WorldCatU.S. and international libraries
• General Web resources

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Hint

• Know what is IN the resource you are searching!
• What disciplines are covered?
• What formats?
• How current?
• How authoritative?

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• Use common sense!
• PsycInfomental health?
• Historical Abstractshistory?
• However, in InfoTrac, et al
• Be aware of overlap

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When would you want to use

• Bibliographic databases
• Full text journals
• Data sources
• Newspapers
• Online catalogs
• The Web

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How to search--effectively

• Plan first.
• Fields to searchauthor, title, journal,
  publication type, language
• Use Boolean operators correctly
• Community needs AND Woodbine
• Community needs OR Woodbine

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• Have an alternate strategy in mind
• What if you get zero results?
• What if you get too many results?

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How to find articles, etc.

• Search Acorn
• Use e-journal title list
• Be aware of interlibrary loan (ILL)

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Evaluating Web Resources

• The Web is
• A major presence in our daily livesGrowing
  exponentiallyAccessible and available A
  provider and distributor of enormous amounts of
  information previously not easily accessed.

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• Unfortunately the web lacks Organization Stan
  dards Publication indicators or identifiers
  Governance Quality control Reliability

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Evaluating any sources

• Publication dates
• Intended audience (professional, research,
  popular)
• Purpose (to prove a point objective)

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Evaluating

• Credibility, reasonableness, accuracy, support
• Author identification
• Quality of the links

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Evaluating

• What is source of information (academic
  institution, company, personal web page)?
• Where is funding from?
• What sources are cited?

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