"Ancient and Medieval History provides thorough coverage of world history from prehistory through the mid-1500s, with special Topic Centers on key civilizations and regions, including the ancient Near East, ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, ancient and medieval Africa, ancient and medieval Asia, the Americas, medieval Europe, and the Islamic World. Each civilization’s history is brought to life through articles, videos and slideshows, primary sources, and more." - Infobase
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Source evaluation in research is not a passive activity. It also requires research and critical thinking. This three lens of information evaluation require that you look at research critically - with research.
SUGGESTED RESEARCH FOR ACADEMIC ARTICLES
Google Search - Search for information on authors, researchers and/or organization. Search titles of journals, newspapers, and magazines. Read their about statements and mission. Do you find a scandal, retractions, or fact checks related to the authors, publishers, or title of source?
Google Scholar - Use a title search to find how many times a scholarly article has been cited. Look at the works that cited your source. Do you see a pattern or anything interesting?
If we look at all 12 versions of it, we see it lives on Academia.edu. Gale, CUNY's Academic Works, Harvard, and EBSCO. Two of those are library databases. Two of those are well known university's academic repositories.
Google Scholar Metrics . - Use to search the ratings of a scholarly journal. A scholarly article in a journal with higher metrics is considered to have more authority.
Retraction Watch. - If research or a scholarly article has been found to be wrong, that information is not found in the article you may have found. Check the title, author(s), and title of scholarly article in this database to see if the paper was retracted. Search their database here.
Paperity - Useful for finding news, reviews, letters to the editor, and other information about author(s), journals, organizations, and articles.
Semantic Scholar.- This is an AI powered research tool for scientific literature. It has a more detailed citation analysis than Google Scholar. It shows hidden connections between research.
NON-ACADEMIC SOURCES
Does the article cite information from other sources? If so, look them up using Google.
Search for article, author, and title if available.
Check the context of the information when you find it.
Does that author cite other information? Review links or search for that information.
Find where the original information exists. Sometimes information and facts may shift when handled by multiple entities.
Read laterally, that is, search for other sources of the same information. Look for higher quality platforms and outlets.
This fast practical Buzzfeed fact checker video shows some of these methods.
Media Bias Check Sources. - This is an article describing different ways to find bias in newspapers, magazine articles, and other platforms.
Look at Snopes. In their 20 years, they have become a well regarded go to source for all types of internet truths and untruths. They also show their work.
Factcheck.org works on statements make in the political sphere. One of their main ways of tracking down information besides transcripts and videos is to contact people. They rely on primary sources.
RAND has a detailed list of fact verifications including video tools.
In your last job at Central Washington University (CWU), you were working on a research project. Tell us about it. How many people were involved? What was the topic? Where are you at with this research? Did you discover anything interesting or find more questions?
I worked as a Research & Instruction Librarian at CWU for about two and a half years. It was my first full-time job out of grad school. In that position, I had faculty status, and part of my professional development involved doing my own research and getting peer-reviewed articles published. For the last such project I undertook at CWU, I teamed up with a couple of my colleagues, Elizabeth Brown and Lauren Wittek. Since we all taught library research skills, both in credit-bearing courses and one-off lectures, we were interested in finding out how much of an impact our teaching, and exposure to library services in general, had on students’ command of these skills over the course of their studies at CWU.
To this end, we sent out a survey to the whole student body. It’s difficult to sum up the results in a paragraph or less, but we did find evidence that students typically had more confidence in their research skills the higher their class standing was. It was hard to tell how much credit we ourselves could claim for that improvement. If nothing else, though, our instruction of first-year students in introductory classes gave them a place to start by demystifying some of the multitudes of resources at their fingertips.
I’ve moved on to other projects here at Big Bend, but Lauren and Elizabeth can use the results of the survey to further develop library programs and services at CWU. This is the nature of academic research – it often does not produce earth-shattering conclusions, but it’s still worthwhile if it produces evidence on which we can base decisions, as well as spur future research, either by ourselves or others who read our work.
As a Librarian, what is the hardest question you have ever been asked. How did you solve it?
I can’t recall a particular “hardest question” I’ve been asked. As a rule, though, the more challenging reference questions are the half-formed ones. Sometimes patrons aren’t really sure what they’re looking for or have a hard time putting it into words. Good reference librarians learn how to help patrons flesh out their research topics/questions, partly by teasing out what the patron really is and isn’t interested in. If you have a choice in the matter, there’s not much point in writing a research paper on something you find boring.
In your off-work life, do you have an area you casually research as more of a hobby and intellectual interest?
There are many such areas for me. I love history, and there are some historical topics I’m passionate about to the extent that I’ll willingly read dense textbooks on them, such as modern German and Russian history. Partly, I do this to better understand how human societies evolve, rise, fall, and recover; but also because history contains endless stories of triumph and tragedy that can be more thrilling than fiction.
I also have more obscure interests. Since I was a kid, I’ve enjoyed watching hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey. At the moment, I’m obsessed with observing golden eagles, which are much more reclusive than the magnificent baldies I grew up seeing in Western Washington. I use maps and information from the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife, the Nature Conservancy, and other agencies or organizations to know where to look for them. Watching falconry and rescue videos on YouTube has helped me identify the few goldens I’ve been lucky enough to spot so far.
What book, poem, or study have you read that engaged you so deeply you were changed?
One of the most interesting books I read in the last couple of years was Lying About Hitler, by Richard J. Evans. It was about a Holocaust denial-centered libel case at which the author, a distinguished British historian, appeared as an expert witness. The testimony of Evans and his fellow historians were critical to winning the case, as it proved both that the plaintiff (writer David Irving) was a Holocaust denier and that there could be no honest, reasonable basis for Holocaust denial. They made a powerful statement about the importance of serious, truth-seeking, evidence-based research.
This book didn’t change me per se, but it confirmed my respect for history as an academic discipline. Before getting my Library & Information Science degree, I earned an MA in History. While I am on a different career path now, I remain proud of that accomplishment.
FROM: Jennifer McCarthy, French & German Instructor BOOK: The Water Dancer AUTHOR: Ta-Nahisi Coates
Literary criticism uses the word defamiliarization to describe the
author’s ability to render the familiar unfamiliar, and the normal strange, by
simultaneously interpreting, re-imagining and re-presenting the world to the reader.
Ta-Nahisi Coates’ wondrous 2019 novel The Water Dancer presents the
hopes, memories, dreams, and aspirations of Hiram Walker in gloriously lyrical
language that has been freed of conventional meaning through defamiliarization
and a touch of magical realism. The people enslaved are the “Tasked.”
The white owners are the “Quality.” Hiram possesses the supernatural
gift of “Conduction” just as his great-grandmother Santi Bess also possessed
and which legend says she used to ferry a number of the Tasked to their freedom
across the ocean and to the continent of Africa. Coates’ vocabulary seems
at the same time as the 19th century and apart from it: it exists only within and throughout the novel itself. -- Jennifer McCarthy
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