Going Beyond Google: using the internet for your PhD

Using the internet for research Aim: To discuss the range of content found on the internet, contrasting the strengths and weaknesses of web-based research, including: Comparing advanced features of search engines such as Google with the basic search function, for finding relevant scholarly literature on their research topic. Contrasting bibliographic databases, specialist search engines or gateways and discussing the appropriate merits of each Evaluating material on the internet using standard criteria.

Session Overview Search engines: pros & cons Basic and Advanced search tips Bing and other search engines Google Scholar & Google Books Introduction to article linking Further help

Review of last week How did you get on? Which databases did you use? Any problems?

The Internet is…. The internet has become most people’s main way of finding information However, there are problems…. There is no central index There is no quality standards or peer review Information can: be moved or removed without warning be wrong, out of date and biased be overwhelming! Exercise in Moodle – authentic websites

Interpreting what you find online World Trade Organisation examples - which is real site - how can you tell?

Internet Evaluation Criteria Who? Name & responsibilities Contact details Individual or organisation? Where? Domain-check the URLs for an indication of the type of organisations who created the site.edu.ac.gov all educational or governmental sites.com commercial site When? When was the site last updated What? Serious or hoax? Evidence? Internet Detective site

Is everything on the web genuine? Websites in Moodle whois.net check who owns the domain Very easy to set up plausible sounding sites

All about Google How does Google work?work? What Google won’t find or tell you! Google is only 13 years old! Founded in 1998 Google accounts - using Gmail, Calendar etc all affect your search results

Getting the most out of Google involves understanding a bit about how it works – and try the advanced search Tips for improving your searching Capitals / lower case Automatic use of ‘and’ Automatic word stemming

Google’s Interface The interface changes subtly all the time Depends on where you are in the world, and which version you went to (google.com or google.co.uk / google.de etc)google.comgoogle.co.uk google.de Basic homepage with advanced options available: Advanced Search More search tools Instant update

Results pages Indenting of some results Clustering of links within a site Google Books and Scholar results in the main Google results Cached pages Different results if you’re logged in Twitter feed results Some results are seconds old, from twitter and Facebook News results (like from the BBC are often minutes old Others can be weeks old.

Google Scholar Contains references to: peer-reviewed papers and abstracts theses books From: academic publishers professional societies preprint repositories universities and other scholarly organisations No Approved List of sources

Should indicate using LSE Article finder to tell you about LSE subscriptions. You can add this off campus If you find something on Google that won’t let you access, check our Library Catalogue for the correct link – using Google may mean that you aren’t recognised as a member of LSE Google Scholar and LSE

Google books Google Book Search Similar to Amazon’s search inside the book Can allow limited to access to books and may be useful Copyright restrictions mean you can only view small amounts of the book No Approved List of sources

iGoogle Can create a personal Google home page with short cuts to useful links and news feedsGoogle home page Set up an iGoogle account-we will use this again in class 6 Google maps for finding maps and satellite images Google Desktop search for searching your own PC For the full list see:

Google Alerts Can set alerts for searches Think carefully about your search terms and how frequently you want to receive alerts Can be overloaded with results – may get very few if search too specific Not all news is ‘new’

Not Just Google… Bing: Yahoo: Wolfram Alpha: University of Berkeley comparison guide des/Internet/SearchEngines.html Meta search engines (search across search engines)

Bing Microsoft – evolved from Live search, MSN Yahoo shares Bing’s engine Social searches Related searches Visual search

Delicious Collection of useful free resources chosen by LSE Library: Use subject tags to refine your search Important to note full web page details for your bibliography Consider using Delicious to file and arrange your own internet resourcesDelicious Social bookmarking classes - CLT

Conclusions So much now available on the Internet -the problem is finding quality resources! Learn to refine your web searching Learn to get the most out of search engines but know what it’s not good for! Start thinking about appropriate citation of web resources

Next Week…. Continuing to go beyond Google to find: Research publications Theses Conference Proceedings Working papers Managing these resources

Image collections on the internet Images are easy to find and download from the Internet (Google image search) Images are subject to copyright and you must exercise caution when using images for anything other than private research and study Safest way is to use the Creative commons image searchCreative commons image search Most websites will have a copyright statement or terms and conditions – check this before using it

Education Image Gallery (EIG) The LSE hold a licence for the EIG Available at: 55,000 images copyright cleared for teaching and research – can use these in your thesis Don’t forget to credit your images

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 2.5 License.Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 2.5 License