© 2008 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman Publishers. 1 Chapter 8 Exploring Electronic and Hard Copy Sources Technical Communication, 11 th Edition John M. Lannon

© 2008 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman Publishers. 2 Comparison Benefits Hard Copy Sources  Organized and searched by librarians  Often screened by experts for accuracy  Easier to preserve and keep secure Electronic Sources  More current, efficient and accessible  Searches can be narrowed or broadened  Can offer material that has no hard copy equivalent

© 2008 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman Publishers. 3 Comparison Drawbacks Hard Copy Sources  Time-consuming and inefficient to search  Offer only text and images  Hard to update Electronic Sources  Access to recent material only  Not always reliable  User might get lost

© 2008 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman Publishers. 4 Internet Sources  Online News and magazines  Government Sites  Community Discussion Groups and Bulletin Boards  Blogs and Wikis  Lists  Library Chatrooms  Library Database Searchable via the Internet  Other types of Web Sites

© 2008 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman Publishers. 5 Other Electronic Sources  Intranet  Extranet  Compact discs  Online retrieval services

© 2008 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman Publishers. 6 Guidelines for Researching on the Internet  Select Keywords or search phrases that are varied and technical  Look for web sites that are discipline specific  Expect limited results from any one search engine  Save or print what you need before it changes or disappears  Download only what you need  Before downloading anything from the Internet, consider the legal and ethical implications  Consider using information retrieval services  Credit all sources

© 2008 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman Publishers. 7 Hard Copy Sources Reference works  Bibliographies, encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, almanacs, directories Card catalogs Guides to literature

© 2008 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman Publishers. 8 Hard Copy Sources Indexes  Book, newspaper, periodical, citation, technical report, patent, and conference proceedings Abstracts Access tools for U.S. government publications Microforms

© 2008 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman Publishers. 9 Any Questions? For additional help reviewing this chapter, please visit the Companion Website for your text at