Off The Shelf

Today’s New York Times has an interesting article about a recent research study by Microsoft on the prevalence of Cyberchondria. That’s when searching the internet for your symptoms leads you to believe you’ve got a terrible medical condition.

As the article notes:

They found that Web searches for things like headache and chest pain were just as likely or more likely to lead people to pages describing serious conditions as benign ones, even though the serious illnesses are much more rare.

For example, there were just as many results that linked headaches with brain tumors as with caffeine withdrawal, although the chance of having a brain tumor is infinitesimally small.

This illustrates a very important point about the internet. We often think that because the internet is open to all, it’s actually a good mirror of the real world. But it’s not.

Putting something up on the internet requires effort and time. That typically means there is usually some level of passion behind everything you see on the web. That passion can be a desire for stardom, the requirements of a paycheck, an intense ideological agenda, or a deep personal interest. That leads to biases about what gets posted. Brain tumors are URGENT! And posters may feel an intense desire to spread knowledge about such a deadly disease. Caffeine withdrawal lacks that emotional punch.

This type of bias doesn’t just affect medical information on the internet. It can, and does, touch just about every topic. That’s why you’ll always see more conspiracy theories online than conspiracy-debunking websites. (There just aren’t that many conspiracy-debunking fanatics out there who are willing to stay up all night proving boring, everyday truths.)

For one humorous example, a blogger in February 2007 discovered that the most commonly cited resource in Wikipedia is The Official Pokemon Handbook. Obviously Pokemon fans are devoted and frequently on the internet.

Why is this important? If you are using the internet to do any kind of research, you need to bear in mind that there are going to be great disparities between what you see posted online and reality. Remember: the internet will probably never be a true representation of reality.

But most media are silently biased by the requirements of the form. Anyone looking for a clumsy, poorly dressed person with bad teeth on television has to have a lot of patience. Ugly Betty’s only on once a week.

- Erin

Finding articles from Harvard Business Review using Journal Locator is not the same as for other journals.

We are currently working on including updated directions on how to navigate to a specific article in Harvard Business Review. But in the meantime, below are the steps you can follow to navigate to specific articles using the citation information.

1. Log in to the Capella University Library.

2. Click Journal & Book Locator.

3. Type the journal title (e.g. Harvard Business Review) and search.

4. Click the database name (e.g. Business Source Complete). You should be taken to a results page showing every article ever published in the journal. If not, click Search Within this Publication at the upper right.

5. The first search box will contain the journal title. Leave this.

6. In the second search box, type the last name of the author. In the box to the right of the author name, change Select a Field (optional) to AU Author.

7. In the third search box, type the first few words of the article title and change the Select a Field (optional) at the right to TI Title. Click search.

8. Scroll through the list of results to find the one you want. Click the HTML Full Text or PDF Full Text link.

NOTE: If you get no results, try searching for only one word in the title and check your spelling.

-Sommer

Your particular learning style not only affects your experience inside a courseroom or your study habits, it also has an impact on library research.  We librarians like to say there’s no perfect search, but there’s also no perfect way to go about a search.  You have to find the techniques and strategies that work best for you.

Not sure about how to succeed based on your learning style?  You can check out these helpful tips from Heather Johnson at Teaching Tips.com.

Here are some ideas for tailoring library searches to learning styles:

Visual learners

• Make a mind map of your search topic and results.
• Outline or list what you’ve found, and what you still need to find.
• Organize the articles you find so each subtopic of your research question has a category.

Auditory learners

• Keep your search process logical.  Don’t go off on search tangents.
• Read article titles and abstracts aloud.
• Put on some music.

Kinesthetic learners

• Create a search process you can use each time you do research.
• Mix a short period of searching with another activity.  Add activity to your searching (perhaps print articles as you go, so you are frequently moving).
• Create a diagram of your search topic or search strategy.  Refer to it after breaks from searching.

When I’m searching, either for my own research or as part of answering a reference question, I use a variety of techniques listed above, as well as some I’ve developed based on my own preferences.  For example, I will simultaneously do the same search in multiple databases.  I prefer to toggle between database screens, evaluating both sets of results as I go.  This type of search could drive another person crazy.  Other librarians maximize their search in one database at a time.

How you get to the results you need isn’t particularly important.  The important thing is that you develop a search strategy that works for you.  And how do you know your strategy works?  You find relevant articles or information in a timely manner with relatively little stress and frustration.

- Erin

Evaluating what you read is an important skill you have to demonstrate as a learner. In some courses you may even have to turn in an evaluation of an article as a course assignment. Are you worried about what you’re expected to say? Feel you’ve never evaluated an article before?

It’s not that hard. In fact, you’re using your information evaluation skills every day, and have been for most of your life.

Every day you encounter news reports, stories, advice, and opinions from a variety of sources. You can’t possibly believe every single source equally – how would you deal with conflicting information? Instead you determine who is the most credible based on what you know about their expertise and experience.

Evaluating journal articles is very similar. You may not have a lot of personal knowledge about the authors or editors of the journal, but there are important clues within the article itself:

• author affiliations or degrees
• the subject focus of the publication
• how arguments are supported (quotes from other experts, references and citations, etc.)

Other aspects of evaluation require some extra legwork on your part, or greater experience in the field:

• are there other articles on the topic by the same author?
• the reputation of the publication
• how radical the ideas in the paper are compared to the current consensus in the field (being a lone voice doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong, but it does require more evidence because it can’t piggy-back on the mountains of evidence provided by others)

As undergraduate and graduate learners, you have an extra layer of evaluation: you have to determine how scholarly something is. Scholarly research requires scholarly sources. And the higher your degree program, the more scholarly your sources must be. Some guy at your bus stop may know a lot about your dissertation topic, but you won’t want to quote him unless he’s published his ideas in a scholarly journal.

For more help with evaluating articles, see our Evaluating section of the Library Research Handbook.

- Erin

PsycBOOKS added the following titles to its coverage list in September and October 2008. Of the titles added, 4 were an APA book and 22 were designated classic books.  Classic books are landmark titles in psychology and are selected by APA experts.

APA Books

1. Addressing cultural complexities in practice: Assessment, diagnosis, and therapy (2nd ed.), © 2008, by Hays, Pamela A.

2. Childhood mental health disorders: Evidence base and contextual factors for psychosocial, psychopharmacological, and combined interventions, © 2008, by Brown, Ronald T.; Antonuccio, David O.; DuPaul, George J.; Fristad, Mary A.; King, Cheryl A.; Leslie, Laurel K.; McCormick, Gabriele S.; Pelham Jr., William E.; Piacentini, John C.; Vitiello, Benedetto

3. Listening to battered women: A survivor-centered approach to advocacy, mental health, and justice, © 2008, by Goodman, Lisa A.; Epstein, Deborah

4. Pedophilia and sexual offending against children: Theory, assessment, and intervention, © 2008, by Seto, Michael C.

Classic Books

1. Critique of pure reason, © 1899, by Kant, Immanuel; Meiklejohn, J. M. D. (Translated)

2. The culture of personality, © 1912, by Randall, John Herman

3. Current psychologies: A critical synthesis, © 1940, by Levine, Albert J.

4. Experience and prediction: An analysis of the foundations and the structure of knowledge, © 1938 (Reprinted 1952), by Reichenbach, Hans

5. Experimental psychology, © 1959, by Siwek, Paul

6. The fundamentals of psychology (rev. ed.), © 1922 (Reprinted 1924), by Pillsbury, W. B.

7. General psychology: From the personalistic standpoint, © 1938, by Stern, William; Spoerl, Howard Davis (Translated)

8. Illustrations of the influence of the mind upon the body in health and disease, designed to elucidate the action of the imagination (2nd American ed.), © 1884, by Tuke, Daniel Hack

9. Instinct in man: A contribution to the psychology of education, © 1917, by Drever, James

10. An outline of abnormal psychology (3rd ed. rev.), © 1925, by Bridges, James Winfred

11. Outlines of descriptive psychology: A text-book of mental science for colleges and normal schools, © 1898, by Ladd, George Trumbull

12. Psychology and life, © 1899, by Münsterberg, Hugo

13. Psychology and life, © 1932, by Mikesell, W. H. (Ed); Dignan, Frank W. (Ed)

14. Psychology and the day’s work: A study in the application of psychology to daily life, © 1918, by Swift, Edgar James

15. Psychology by experiment, © 1927, by Kline, Linus Ward; Kline, Frances Littleton

16. Psychology: Normal and abnormal, with special reference to the needs of medical students and practitioners, © 1930, by Bridges, James Winfred

17. The psychology of attention (authorised translation, 4th rev. ed.), © 1898, by Ribot, Th.

18. The psychology of belief, © 1936, by Lundholm, Helge

19. Psychology: The science of behavior (rev.ed.), © 1940, by Muenzinger, Karl F.

20. Source book in ancient philosophy, © 1907, by Bakewell, Charles M.

21. Systematic psychology: Prolegomena, © 1929, by Titchener, Edward Bradford

22. The unconscious mind, © 1898, by Schofield, Alfred T.

Note: To read any of these ebook go to the Databases A-Z page. Scroll down to PsycBOOKS and type in the title

– Erika

If you are trying to cite electronic resources based on what you find in the APA Manual, you may have had your share of frustration. The internet has changed so quickly, and the Manual hasn’t been able to keep up with all of the online possibilities. Even with the addition of the APA Style Guide to Electronic References,
which is available on the Capella Library Guides & Tutorials page, electronic resources can be confusing.

So confusing, in fact, that you may not even know where to begin. If you’re tempted to create a citation that contains just the URL, STOP!!!

It is almost impossible for an internet resource to be both valid for scholarly research and have no citation information beyond the URL.

Scholarly resources on the internet typically mimic scholarly resources in the print world. You should see a title, author names, and a date. If it’s an internet journal, it probably has a journal volume and issue number as well.

Sometimes you’ll see useful resources that don’t have a specific person named as the author. If it’s from the government or a professional/scholarly organization, that group is probably the “author.” You may have to do some investigating to figure out exactly who is the author. Page 273 in the APA Manual has some examples that may help you understand how to cite an author when there’s no personal name.

Remember: You can search the internet quickly and easily, but determining what you can use in a paper and how to cite it often takes a bit of thought and effort.

For example, if you wanted to cite this blog post, you’d have a lot of information to include. There’s a web address (URL) and retrieval date. There’s a title for the post, a post date, and the name of the blog. Only my first name appears at the bottom of the post, but you can easily get my full name by clicking About Us. That’s exactly the type of extra work you may need to do to properly cite a web resource.

- Erin

Numbers are powerful things. A simple statistic can help frame your argument or make an important point. They can be a great addition to a paper or discussion post, but they are often difficult to find online. Sure, you can find lots of numbers out there, but how often do you see the exact number you were hoping for?

Why is it so hard to get the statistics you want?

• It costs money to compile them. Producers want to be paid for them, so they aren’t always available for free.
• Someone may not have researched your specific question. You may be interested in how many homemade pancakes are made in Georgia each year, but that doesn’t mean someone else spent the time and money to conduct that survey.
• Statistics are often kept secret by businesses. Perhaps General Mills knows exactly how many pancakes are made in Georgia, but they aren’t telling. That kind of knowledge can help companies position and market themselves, and they aren’t going to let their competitors get that type of information for free.
• Statistics may not be comparable over time. One good example of this is the U.S. Census Bureau’s changing measurements of race. As America changes, the census includes different categories. But they can’t go back in time to make the old data categories match the new.

So, what are some things you can do to help find the statistics you want?

• Search FedStats for Federal Government Statistics.
• Get to know the government agencies that collect statistics in your field. Some examples are the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, the Bureau of Labor Statistics or the National Center for Education Statistics.
• Check newspaper articles. Many include statistics as well as the source.
• Look at professional organizations. Organizations often produce reports about the fields they represent, and many will be available online.
• Search the web using keywords such as data or statistics.
  

As a new person in your field, it can be hard to find the statistics you want. But as you learn more about research in your field, you’ll become aware of what statistics exist and who produces them.

- Erin

Looking for a new job?  Wondering how you can stand out in an interview?  One thing you can easily do to impress an interviewer is to show what you know about a company.  And the library can help you do that.

The Capella Library has several databases designed for researching specific companies, including LexisNexis and Hoover’s.  You can learn about a company’s size, markets, or recent history.  They can help you identify companies you want to work for or give you the information you’ll use in an interview to prove that you’re interested and engaged.

For help doing company research, check out our guide: Finding Company Information.   It covers both library and internet resources that provide information about individual companies.

Company research isn’t just for courseroom assignments.  It can help your professional life as well.

- Erin