Given the following sample research question, plan and execute a search for relevant information resources.
Research statement: I want to investigate how the practice of blogging has influenced high school education.
1. Identify the main concepts in your search statement or research question. List the concepts here; these will become keywords that you will use when you search for information in a database.
Concepts that make up my search statement:
2. Think of synonyms for each of your concepts. What other words might you use to search for relevant information?
Concept 1:
Concept 1 Synonyms:
Concept 2:
Concept 2 Synonyms:
3. Using the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT, construct a search statement that includes the various concepts and synonyms.
4. For this exercise, use the database called ProQuest Research Library. This database covers a wide variety of topics from many different fields.
Where do you go to get access to ProQuest? List the steps you took or Web pages you visited to find ProQuest.
5. Using truncation allows you to find all forms of a word, when the beginning letters are the same, as in the words "blogs", "bloggers", "blogging", and "blogosphere".
5a. What is the truncation symbol in ProQuest? Check the Search Tips if you're not sure.
5b. Using the truncation symbol, what could you search for in ProQuest that would find results containing any of the following terms: "blogs", "bloggers", "blogging", and "blogosphere"?
6. There might be articles in the database that use the term "blog" and others that use the term "weblog." How can we use Boolean operators in a search to find articles that include either term (but not necessarily both terms in the same article)?
7. Perform a search in ProQuest that will return articles related to blogging. What search term(s) did you use?
8. How many results were returned?
9. Since we are looking for articles related to blogging in the field of education, refine your search by adding "AND education" to your search. How many results were returned with "AND education" added to your previous search?
10. If you search for "weblogs and education" you will get several hundred results. Look at the section of the results screen marked "Suggested Topics" and you will see several items listed there. One link listed there is "Weblogs AND Education." Clicking this link will perform a Subject search on those terms, rather than a more general keyword search. Subject searches are more specific than keyword searches, but you have to use the database's preferred terms (such as "weblogs" instead of "blogs"). How many results do you get if you click "Weblogs AND Education" under Suggested Topics?
11. ProQuest allows you to narrow your search even further to show only articles that come from scholarly journals. Click the Scholarly Journals tab to limit the results in this way. How many results are now displayed?
12. Once you have narrowed the list of results down to a manageable number (say, less than 50), you should start scanning the results to find potential articles for your research. Examine the list of results and provide complete citations for two of the articles in your results list that might be useful for this example topic.
13. One of the articles on the results list is an article called "Web 2.0: New Tools for Distance Learning" by Christopher Essex. View this article. In the References section of Essex's article, there is a citation for an article called "Scholars Who Blog" by D. Glenn. Is the article by Glenn available through ProQuest?
14. Describe the steps you took to determine whether the Glenn article is available through ProQuest.