© 2005 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman Publishers. 1 Chapter 8 Exploring Electronic and Hard Copy Sources Technical Communication, 10/e John M. Lannon

© 2005 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman Publishers. 2 Hard Copy Sources Benefits  Discovered and organized by librarians  Easier to preserve and keep secure Drawbacks  Time-consuming and inefficient to search  Hard to update

© 2005 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman Publishers. 3 Electronic Sources Benefits  More current, efficient, and accessible  Searches can be narrowed or broadened  Can offer material that has no hard copy equivalent Drawbacks  Access to recent material only  Not always reliable; sources may be very biased  User might get lost  Material might disappear

© 2005 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman Publishers. 4 Internet Sources  Usenet  Listservs  Library chatrooms  Electronic magazines (E-zines)  inquiries  World Wide Web

© 2005 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman Publishers. 5 Other Electronic Sources Compact discs Online retrieval services  Bibliographic databases  Full-text databases  Factual databases

© 2005 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman Publishers. 6 Hard Copy Sources Reference works  Bibliographies, encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, almanacs, directories Card catalogs Guides to literature

© 2005 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman Publishers. 7 Hard Copy Sources Indexes  Book, newspaper, periodical, citation, technical report, patent, and conference proceedings Abstracts Access tools for U.S. government publications Microforms

© 2005 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman Publishers. 8 Any Questions? For additional help reviewing this chapter, please visit the Companion Website for your text at