PSYCINFO or SOCINDEX -- Module 4

Search Terms: Information Literacy and Social Media 

Search Terms: “Information Literacy” and Social Media and

Student 

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.

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.  

More to come on Information Literacy