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So it's time to write that research paper or
time to do your first speech and you need to do some research for it!
Well most us don't go to the library. Most of us go to Google.
So today I'm going to focus on how to do scholarly research
online in a way that you ensure the credibility of your sources.
The technique I like to use was developed by Alan November of
November Learning and it's called MAPing, Think about a road map.
When you pull out a road map you are trying to figure out where you're going.
and the goal of this is to guide you through online research so that you
come up with the most credible resources possible.
The three components of MAPing are...
M: metaweb information
A: Author, and
P: Purpose The metaweb information is the information contained
in the URL address. So that www.whatever...
...that's what you're looking for when you look at the metaweb information.
Sometimes the URL address is all the information you need.
But other times you have to dig a little deeper and take a look at the author.
Who wrote that website? What organization sponsors that website?
And then, the purpose. What's the reason that they've put this information out there
for the general public to consume?
So let's start with metaweb information in a little more detail.
When I'm looking at the metaweb information, one of the most helpful things
is to look at the extension at the end of the address. The .com or the .org...
...try to figure out what that tells you. If my extension ends in .org, such as
the American Heart Association (heart.org) or cancer.org which is the
American Cancer Society.
That tells me that it's an organization and it's usually a non-profit
organization.
.com is commercial, usually for-profits. So Facebook.com is one we're all
familiar with.
Google.com - a lot of commercial sites
.net = network Oftentimes these are personal web sites and they're not used
quite as often, but it is an option.
So if you have a website it might end in a .net
.edu is specific to colleges and universities.
So the elementary school here in town... they're not going to end in a.edu.
But Galveston College: gc.edu does. .gov or government websites.
texas.gov. Any type of government organization will end in a
.gov as well. So that's helpful information when you are trying to make sense
of the URL address.
If you don't get what you need from the URL, the next place you can go
is to the author. So taking a look at the author,
who wrote this website? What organization sponsors this website? Is it credible?
Is it a fringe group? For the most part the middle ground
type information is your best information. Any extreme one way or the
other should be avoided.
you need to question and take a careful look at. Anybody who puts information out
there on the internet has a purpose in mind. They are either trying to disseminate or share
information
or maybe they have a political agenda
or they're trying to sell you something? To take a look at the purpose as well
and see if that biases the website one direction or another. And understand that
that may influence the information that the
website is providing. Now let's go out take a look at some real web sites.
Whether you're using Bing or Google or another site, it will affect
how the information comes up. The listed information that you get: what comes
first? what comes second? It's going to be a little different in each of the
search engines. I'm going to use Bing here, and I'm going to write a research paper on
Martin Luther King, Jr. There he is.
So taking a look at these
the very first one that comes up is Wikipedia.org.
Wikipedia is a great source of information but it's NOT a good source
of scholarly information. The next one I'm looking at, and I'm looking at nothing more than
the URL address, is nobelprize.org.
You've heard of the Nobel Prize, right? Martin Luther King, Jr. won one, and
this is his bio on that particular site. It's gonna be a pretty good source of
information. I don't need to look much further beyond the metaweb information.
Here are some images... answers.com This is one of those sites where people
write-in questions and other people write answers.
You don't know who the author is. And because
the author could be any Joe Blow out there, this is NOT the best source of
information.
thekingcenter.org Okay. It ends in a .org.
So that tells me it's an organization -- probably a non-profit.
That alone doesn't tell me any information about it though.
When I log in to the King Center I can see pretty quickly
by the description here "established in 1968 by Coretta Scott King..."
I know a little bit about this organization. It's kind of like a
presidential library for Martin Luther King that houses all his official
documents.
It's kind of like a museum. So it would be a pretty good source for information.
Next on our list...
biography.com Okay, this is a company.
If I go click on that link and look at it in a little more detail,
it's the Biography Channel. You know that channel that plays
biographies people all day long? It's not a bad source of information.
But it's probably not the best source I can find out there.
Next one down on the list...
martinlutherking.org Okay, another organization. A non-profit.
If I click on that link it pulls up this page.
You take a look at this page for a few minutes and start to see that it's not
a "normal" Martin Luther King page. There's this quote over here that's kinda weird.
And rap lyrics?
So okay...who's the author of this page? Who put it together?
There's nothing clearly at the top here.
Oftentimes you can find the author at the bottom of the page.
Sure enough this one says "hosted by Stormfront.org"
When I get to the Stormfront page, you see first off-- appearing in the left-hand corner
"white pride world wide."
David Duke videos and White Pride enterprises...This is
a Martin Luther King website, put together by a white supremacy group!
So again you're looking at the author and you're looking at the purpose
and suddenly this site definitely has a biased view toward Martin Luther King
and would not be a good source of information to use for project.
Just a few other ones I want to point out...
seattletimesnewsource.com Seattle Times - a major newspaper. That's gonna be a pretty good source of
information.
mlkonline.net. I don't know anything about that one. It ends in a .net.
It's probably somebody's hobby website. I'd have to take a look at that
in more depth to see if it was a worthwhile source.
And then I have some other major news sources. MSNBC. The Phoenixville News.
Chattanooga Newspaper.
Again those news sources are probably gonna be good sources of information.
So just remember - when you're taking a look at internet sources consider
first of all that URL address:
the metaweb information. The author of that particular website,
and the purpose to help you decipher if this is a credible source of information.
Thank you!