Sunday, December 2, 2018

Online Information Retrieval -- Course Reflection

The course online information and retrieval has been a very informative.  The challenge of creating a blog alone has been a great learning experience for me.  It’s definitely a skill that I would like to develop further.  It was a great opportunity to just get started in the blogosphere.  

The searching itself has been eye opening.  I already knew that there was endless information available but this course has been very useful in breaking down how to navigate the Internet, find reliable sources, use search techniques, and analyze information retrieved. 

My favorite search technique was the building block and I also found the citation pearl technique to be very useful as well.  Sometimes you are unfamiliar with your topic and you may not know where to begin. These techniques encourage you to either build on your search based on the information you retrieve which can help you either narrow or expand the search.  I found the building block search technique gave the researcher more control over the search.  I liked the citation pearl because you may be unfamiliar with certain terms on the subject you are trying to research and the citation pearl technique helps you look out for a keyword or words that could really make a difference in the relevancy of the information that you retrieve.

Image Search -- Module 12

I chose to use Google images for the image search.  I searched for Information literacy and fake news.  I searched each word separately and then searched them together.  Each way I came up with a variety of images. 




Non filtered images using the terms information literacy and fake news.

When I selected tools on the far left the drop down for usage rights appeared.  When I selected usage rights and “labeled for noncommercial reuse the images changed.  I think it is very important for people to understand usage rights especially when using images.  We have access now to so many things.  Usage rights of art and images can easily be overlooked when people are creating things such as flyers or anything that could potentially be shared with a large group of people.  It is important to select images that you have permission to distribute.   The drop down for license rights is very useful. 


Sunday, November 25, 2018

DIALOG -- Module 10




Initial search of "information literacy"


Disinformation search



Disinformation and information literacy search

Social Media -- Module 9


Social media search using Google Social Search for information literacy and fake news.  You must select all boxes of the each social media site to retrieve results from each of the sites. 



Results using information literacy and fake news. 


Best hit


MODULE 9
SOCIAL SEARCH ENGINE: Google Social Search
S STRATEGY
 Citation Pearl  - disinformation
REFINEMENT SS
 I used Google Social Search to look for information on my topic of information literacy. I was not surprised to see a lot of information on the topic but I thought I would see more hits regarding reading literacy.  There were a lot of ads. Some of the hits I returned were for fundraisers, workshops and conferences. There was even a webinar hosted by ALA.  I searched for the term information literacy first and retrieved 66,300 results then I searched for information literacy and fake news and retrieved 10,700 results. Then I added the term disinformation.
BEST HIT SS
Once I broadened my search to the other sites I found that Pinterest had the most hits and they ran the gamut from library boards on information literacy to fake news images to digital literacy images.  The lowest number of results were from Instagram with 156 results.  Twitter had 8,380 results, Google+ had 218 results, and LinkedIn had 3,190 results. 
1 CONTENT THNG YOU LEARNED
 A headline posted on LinkedIn titled “Our best hope against fake news? Your local librarian,” grabbed my attention.  It was a refreshing article by a tech geek who truly appreciates librarians and understands that, “being a librarian goes well beyond checking out books.”  
The author does a great job of explaining information literacy and its vital role in the Information Age. 
1 SEARCHING THING YOU LEARNED
 This was my first time using Google Social Search and didn’t realize I had to check each of the social media boxes. On my first try I noticed all of the hits were from Facebook and then realized I needed to check the boxes for each social media site.  
REFLECT ON HOW THE SEARCH WENT
 Overall I liked the hit for UNESCO MILCLICKS found on Facebook and Instagram which shows an infographic on why we shouldn’t use the term “fake news” and that we are better of using the term “disinformation.” 

Monday, October 22, 2018

Statista -- Module 8

Module 8
Statista
S STRATEGY
Simple
REFINEMENT SS
Initial search with the term information literacy yielded 197 results. Many of the results were from Australia, UK, and other countries.  It also included information on reading literacy.  I narrowed it by country and yielded 12 results.
BEST HIT SS
I found two really good hits.  One was statistics on “Service priorities of academic libraries U.S. 2016,” which offered interesting chart on where information literacy falls in the service priority list of academic libraries. The other was a more interesting report by what seems to be the UK version of the FCC.  The report I found on Statista offered detailed statistics on the subject of media literacy a subset of information literacy as it relates to social media and Internet use.
1 CONTENT THNG YOU LEARNED
Adults Media Use and Attitudes report 2018 by Ofcom a British communications company – examines adult media literacy in Britain for people ages 16 and older.  The report defines media literacy as, “Media literacy is the ability to use, understand and create media and communications in a variety of contexts.”
This report could be very useful in researching information literacy research and it is published annually.  They had detailed breakdowns of statistics based on research that measured a variety of thought processes and circumstances.  Some of the questions researched were, amount of time used on devices, types of devices used, opinions on search engine accuracy, and whether users believed the information they retrieved online and if they took the next step to check the information

1 SEARCHING THING YOU LEARNED
I liked that you could sort by Country.  This helped to narrow the search for statistics in the geographic location that you were interested in.
REFLECT ON HOW THE SEARCH WENT
I found Statista easy to use as well and it offered a lot of information. I liked the breakdown of the search results on the side that showed the number of items found under their different categories of statistics, studies and reports, expert tools, infographics, etc.  I also liked that you could sort by country.


Sunday, October 21, 2018

Lexis Nexis -- Module 7

Module 7
Lexis Nexis
S STRATEGY
Building block: Initial search was for information literacy which yielded 997 results
REFINEMENT SS
I did two types of refinements. The first was geographical and narrowed it to the United States.  That yielded 257 results. I wasn’t successful searching within those geographically refined results for “media literacy and “digital literacy.” I then tried the search with in results on my main search results and was able to yield 5 results using the key words “digital literacy” AND “media literacy”
BEST HIT SS
Two articles seemed relevant: “What is digital literacy?” and “Common Core gives nod to digital skills.”
1 CONTENT THNG YOU LEARNED
I learned from the “what is digital literacy”article that I may have better results using the term digital literacy versus information literacy.  The term is more specific to Internet and social media and cites the ALA definition of, “the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills.” 
1 SEARCHING THING YOU LEARNED
This database allows you to search within your results by using categories but the lists to help you narrow your search  were long.  You also have the option of searching within results in a box on the top right but I would say you need to have some skill with using Boolean operators.  I did not find that appealing. 
REFLECT ON HOW THE SEARCH WENT
I did not prefer this database. I think it is probably a good source if you want to search newspapers but I didn’t necessarily find it the easiest of the databases that we’ve used to find information. 


WorldCat -- Module 6

Module 6
WorldCat
S STRATEGY
Specific facet: I did an advance search using the terms information literacy and “fake news”
REFINEMENT SS
Yielded 85 results: on the first page there were 3 articles that used the terms information literacy and fake news .
BEST HIT SS
Alternative facts, digital literacy,  and news literacy were terms that came out of the search.  I refined the search by adding quotes around “information literacy” as well as “fake news”.  That yielded 51 results.
1 CONTENT THNG YOU LEARNED

1 SEARCHING THING YOU LEARNED
A book title “Information literacy and libraries in the age of fake news.” The book covers how libraries are combating misinformation on the Internet.  I think this would be a great source.  Another book that would be a great resource is “Fake news and alternative facts: Information literacy in a post-truth era
REFLECT ON HOW THE SEARCH WENT
I think WorldCat is a good resource if you want to see a broad picture of resources available on a topic and where they are located.  Overall WorldCat is not one of my favorite databases. 



Initial Search

Sunday, October 7, 2018

Science Direct or PubMed -- Module 5



Specific facet search

Initial advanced search for "information literacy and fake news."


Refined search results using specific facets for date and type of article. 


Tuesday, September 25, 2018

PSYCINFO or SOCINDEX -- Module 4


Search Terms: Information Literacy and Social Media 



Search Terms: “Information Literacy” and Social Media and
Student 


Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Academic Search Complete vs. JSTOR: Great resources -- Module 3


Both JSTOR and Academic Search Complete are great resources for scholarly, peer reviewed journals that cover a variety of subjects.  I chose JSTOR because I found numerous articles on the topic of information literacy and credibility in a variety of areas of study.  Academic Search Complete yielded great results but only in the field of academia. 

STRATEGY:
My search strategy was to start with a basic search, see what I yielded and use some of the database features to narrow the search.
I tried several combinations of search terms which yielded a large number of results:
  • Social media and fake news
  • Information literacy and credibility
  • Information literacy and fake news
  • Information literacy and authenticity
  • Information literacy and media literacy
  • Information literacy, social media and credibility 



BEST HIT:
"information literacy and fake news"










LESSONS LEARNED:
I learned that there is an enormous amount of content using the term information literacy.  You can use that content to narrow your focus by using some of the search terms you find in the results.  
What I learned from searching this database is that it was very user-friendly in that it helped you narrow your results with the “Refine Results” bar.  This bar allows you to narrow your results down by content type, date range or subject.  You can also search within your results which is another great feature. 







I thought the search on information literacy in this database went very well.  I was able to yield a lot of results and the refine results bar was very useful.

Tuesday, September 11, 2018

SPIN - Database of Funding Opportunities -- Module 2



I selected SPIN database because I was able to find a grant for media literacy from the Media Literacy Educator Exchange.  Many of the results I found on both sites pertained to health literacy or language literacy.  The grant I found is for a 10-day group exchange program which will allow discussion regarding teaching media literacy skills to youth. Narrowing my search to include information literacy and social media allowed me to come up with the result for the grant that matches my topic.  The grant did appear in the broad search as well but it was at the top of the search when I narrowed the search to a more specific topic. 
Results from a broad search for information literacy.

I like that the database has the ability to save searches and bookmark items. I can see how this will be very helpful to someone seeking grants.

I found SPIN to be a bit more user friendly and Grants.gov to be slightly overwhelming visually.  When I first pulled up the site my first thought was where do I begin.  
Results from a narrowed search.

Introduction

Welcome to my Blog! Let's Dialogue!

The topic of information literacy has become a hot button in the age of the Internet and even more so since the development of social media platforms.  This blog will research information literacy and its effect on “fake news” or misinformation in a social media environment.  

I have always been interested in the importance of compiling and disseminating information to the public in a fair and unbiased way because my interest and minor career in journalism. 

We have to be able to decipher the vast amount of information we now have access to and weed out the good from the bad.  

Online Information Retrieval -- Course Reflection

The course online information and retrieval has been a very informative.  The challenge of creating a blog alone has been a great learning ...