Going Beyond Google: using the internet for your PhD

Using the internet for researchAim: 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• Information can:• be moved or removed without warning• be wrong, out of date and biased• be overwhelming!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?

• www.wto.org

• www.worldtradeorganisation.com

• www.gatt.org

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?• 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)

• 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• http://scholar.google.com • 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 http://books.google.com/ • 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 feeds

• 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: http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/

Google Alerts

• Can set email 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: http://www.bing.com/• Yahoo: http://uk.yahoo.com/• Wolfram Alpha: http://

www.wolframalpha.com/ University of Berkeley comparison guide

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/SearchEngines.htmlMeta search engines (search across search engines)• http://www.metacrawler.com/• http://www.zuula.com/

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: http://delicious.com/lselibrary

• 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 resources

• 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 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: http://edina.ac.uk/eig/ • 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.