Off The Shelf

One of the most annoying parts of research is finding a reference to a great article, and then not having instant access online. Whether you’re a procrastinator waiting until the day before your paper is due, or just an impatient researcher who wants to read everything right away, no one likes to discover that what they want won’t be available right now.

Like many learners, I didn’t like to wait for interlibrary loan either. My solution while working on my degree was to spend a Saturday morning driving to various university libraries with a notepad, pen, and a sack of quarters for the copier.

Not everyone is willing to take my decidedly old-fashioned approach to bypassing interlibrary loan. These days there are some web-based alternatives forming.

DeepDyve is a scholarly article rental service. For 99 cents you can read an article online for 24 hours. No printing. No saving. Their collection is heavily weighted toward scientific journals, which can be extremely expensive. New car expensive, not just used car expensive.

Of course, many journal publishers are happy to sell you an article permanently. But at $25 each, that can be a very expensive way to do research. For the focused researcher, a rental for a day may be just what’s needed.

Some researchers aren’t content to pay any money for scholarly articles, and instead have resorted to the same type of file sharing that music lovers have used. Just as sharing music with strangers has run afoul of copyright law, swapping journal articles runs the same risks. A research article in the Internet Journal of Medical Informatics investigated the breadth of file sharing on one internet site. They estimated $700,000 worth of losses to journal publishers in the 6 month period of their study.

We’re still in the early days of scholarly information online. There are plenty of business models (legal and not) waiting to be tried. Who knows what the landscape will look like in another 10 years. Perhaps the journal subscription will disappear. Or perhaps libraries will simply be portals for content, rather the warehouses of information. In any case, the options for accessing scholarly articles are increasing. Just try to keep your discussion post from turning into a court case!

- Erin

Imagine you are in a library.  As you walk through the library the books all disappear, only to return three hours later, as if nothing happened.

Or, you find an item on the shelf.  You pull it down, open the book, and instead of the text you find the following: 404 Error  Page Not Found.   You open the next one and suddenly an advertisement for cheap pharmaceuticals starts playing.

Okay, so that’s never going to happen.  But it happens every day on the internet.  Focused on providing immediate content, the internet doesn’t have a great archive.  Things come and go.  And as we transfer ever greater quantities of information (and hackers become more sophisticated), the system can simply shut down.

The reference librarians at Capella use the internet daily, so we’re well aware of the frequency of losses.  In fact, whenever the Google search engine stops working–which is more often than you think –we laugh about how we broke Google (that should give you an idea of Librarian humor). 

There have been some other high-profile internet service problems lately: Twitter was taken down by a hacker and gmail stopped working entirely for a while.    This sort of loss of service can be a real bummer if you let your friends’ Tweets coordinate your social activities, or you’ve placed your entire life on Google’s servers. 

But how does this impact your academic life?  What does it mean for research? 

Library databases are similar to the internet in this respect.  There’s no guarantee that a journal will remain a part of any particular database, and only a portion of journals have digitized all the way back to volume 1, issue 1.   But as long as you’ve got a citation, you can use alternative methods to dig up a journal article.

Open internet pages are a completely different beast.  They may exist in only one form: that single internet page.  And that page can disappear at any time.  In fact, many links go missing after only a few months or years, which is just the blink of an eye in the world of academic research.

But that same item may continue as a citation in a bibliography that no one can check.   Something can be misinterpreted or misquoted by a single author, but because no one can check it, the misuse is the only use that lives on.

Similarly, an internet world where things disappear quickly is a world where people may be reinventing the wheel . . . every few years.  Researchers are subject to fads, just like everyone else, so a ‘hot topic’ from 1999 can show up again in 2009, but no one can find the results of the previous round of interest.

This isn’t something new.  The fall of the Roman Empire caused the ‘loss’ of a lot of information – from the writings of ancient philosophers to the recipe for concrete.  The Western world survived that loss of information, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think about what impermanence means for research today.

- Erin

 The good, the bad, and the ugly of open internet research often show up here on Off The Shelf.  No matter how often the librarians tout the library databases, we get plenty of learners who can’t get enough of internet search engines.

And what about those internet search engines?  They seem so benign, so useful.  Yet, with every search engine comes a set of motivations, decisions, and consequences.  Before you run your next search of Google, take a moment and read this interesting article:

Grimmelmann, J.  (2009).  The Google Dilemma.  New York Law School Law Review, 939. Retrieved from  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1160320 

You can download it using one of the links on the page.

Grimmelmann brings up some very interesting points about what Google does, and does not do, when it creates your search results list.  Considering how reliant we are on search engines, Google and other search engines have the power to shape what we know.  On top of that, sophisticated internet content creators have the power to shape Google.

So, what does that mean for the future of information?  For shared knowledge?  For your next research paper?

- Erin

Wikipedia has recently announced that they will be using expert editors on entries for living people.  The general public will no longer be able to change an entry and see it posted immediately.  From now on, an expert editor will have to approve the changes before they go live.

This is designed to avoid some of the problems Wikipedia entries have had due to “vandalism,” where false information is placed in an entry.  Living people, who face personal repercussions from this type of vandalism, are the first to have their entries monitored this way.

While this change affects only Wikipedia, it does highlight some important questions about the internet and collaborative media:

• Who is the author?  Do they have to identify themselves?
• Does the author face any repercussions if they post something that is false, misleading, stolen, etc.?
• Who gains if there is false information provided? Or if the appropriate context is missing?

In many ways the internet is the  “wild west” of the information age.   There are very few gatekeepers to make sure that you are getting what you think you are.  Wikipedia, which started as a free-for-all, is now putting gatekeepers in place. 

But much of the internet is still strictly caveat lector: reader beware!

- Erin

Did you know that 14% of Capella learners are part of the military? Whether active duty, veterans, reservists, or Department of Defense/Uniformed Services personnel, the military makes up a large percentage of the learners we serve.

Maybe you’re one of them. Maybe you’re a family member or friend. Maybe you’re simply interested in researching about this select group of individuals and the myriad of resources available to them and others connected to or affected by military life.

Here are a few guides and resources compiled by librarians at other institutions you may find informative and useful. In particular, each guide includes links to some wonderful web resources that provide services and information to military personnel.

• http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/subjectareas/milsci (by Kathleen Hanna at IUPUI)

• http://people.sfcollege.edu/diana.matthews/subjguide/veterans.htm (by Diana Matthews at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, FL)

• http://nnlm.gov/training/veteranshealth/webresources.pdf (compiled by Terri Ottosen at the U of Maryland Health Sciences and Human Services Library)

• http://www.wo.ala.org/veteransinfo/index.php?title=Main_Page (American Library Association’s – Veterans Information @ Your Library site)

• http://www.loc.gov/vets/ (Library of Congress Veterans History Project)

Beyond these resources, Capella also has an Armed Forces Department that supports all military and veteran learners. Visit their site on iGuide to find contact information for the Armed Forces and Veteran Support staff, as well as information about VA Resources, Tuition Assistance, Military Scholarships, and Career Resources just to name a few things.

To navigate to their website go to iGuide – click Learner Services – click Armed Forces Support — click Armed Forces Support Home.

–Jennie

If you’re reading this, you’ve figured out how to get to a blog.  But how much to you know about “microblogging?”

Or the biggest name in microblogging today: Twitter?

Twitter lets you quickly send out a short message of 140 characters, called a tweet.  Then anyone who is signed up to receive your tweets gets to read it.  You can create a network of friends who all watch each others’ tweets, or you can join the multitude following the moment-by-moment details of the lives of the famous.

Twitter may have started as a fast way for people to quickly update all their friends at once, but it has quickly moved beyond that.  With 6 million users, a recent Business Week article looks at some of the possibilities for businesses who want to tap that market.

Politicians have also joined the Twitter craze.  The Obama campaign ran its own Twitter stream, and the president got to be the subject (or not) of tweets when other pols used Twitter to comment during his speech.

Not sure how this will ever apply to your academic or professional life?  Think again.  Twitter is making inroads at professional and academic conferences, with audience members pouring out streams of tweets about what’s going on.   The ALA Annual Conference, where thousands of librarians meet to discuss things like Twitter,  isn’t even happening until July, and it’s already got quite a long list of tweets.

In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t Twitter.   If you read my blog posts, you’ll know that I can’t contain myself to only 140 characters.  And, like many others who work in academia, I have a real soft spot for long, analytical discussions with footnotes.  Not exactly tweet material.

Still, even if you don’t Twitter yourself, you may need to be aware of it in future.  If this trend really catches on,  you may be in the dark without it.

In the meantime, you can revel in your luddite attitude while watching this funny YouTube video from Current.

- Erin

When people talk about the internet, they tend to talk about how how much better it is than the print world. It’s fast, multi-media, and intricately connected. The screen is far beyond what paper could ever be.

BUT . . .

All this talk about the fabulous features of the internet can blur one important way that the internet is just like paper. The internet is simply the delivery service, not the content.

In the print world you’ll see a wide variety of content, and most of us are very good at identifying and evaluating that content. For example, most of us immediately know that all of the following can appear on paper:

• grocery lists
• how-to instructions
• maps
• family photos
• news articles
• legal cases
• scholarly research papers
• conference proceedings

Plus, we can identify each paper item quickly and will which ones are most appropriate for academic research papers.

Yet, when many of us see those different items on a screen (and if you think for a moment, you’ll realize that all of the above can be found through an internet connection) our ability to identify and evaluate items breaks down.

For example, if an acquaintance hands you a paper flier originally printed by an unknown source that’s been passed through dozens of different hands, you’d probably really question the authenticity of the statements in it.

But somehow, email forwards don’t get that same level of scrutiny.

Similarly, a person can post a webpage using the same amount of time and energy it takes to write a manifesto and tape it to the side of a bus shelter.

Now, you’d probably stop and think before citing a bus shelter screed in your assignment, but on the internet, everything looks kind of the same. The clues that tell you something should or should not be used are less apparent.

But that doesn’t mean that all things on the internet are equal. Because almost everything on the internet is just a version of what exists in the physical world (printed matter, film, etc.), the first thing you should do with anything you find online is try to compare it to a real-world item you know about.

Is this a home video?

Is this an advertisement trying to sell me something?

Is this a research paper from a reputable academic journal?

Is this a pamphlet from a health organization?

Is this the rantings of a lunatic?

Is this a government research report?

Not only will knowing this help you determine what you should believe or use in a research paper, identifying the nature of the content will also help you create the correct APA citation.

APA citations are based on the content, and electronic versions of the content require an extra bit of information in the citation, not an entirely different citation.

For more help evaluating items from the internet, see our PDF guide Evaluating Internet Sources or our Evaluating Your Sources tutorial.

- Erin

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

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