Washington evaluators brown bag presentation ppt 2010
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10+ HIGH QUALITY/ LOW COST RESEARCH RESOURCES FOR EVALUATORS Matthew Von Hendy MA/MLS Green Heron Information Services
description
High quality low cost or free research resources for evaluation professionals. Also useful for social science and professional researchers.
Transcript of Washington evaluators brown bag presentation ppt 2010
10+ HIGH QUALITY/ LOW COST RESEARCH RESOURCES FOR EVALUATORSMatthew Von Hendy MA/MLS
Green Heron Information Services
WELCOME!
Owner—Green Heron Information Services
Professional Librarian—National Academies of Science, EPA, NASA
Birder, cyclist, runner—recent Alaskan adventurer
BROWN BAG GOALS
Briefly discuss 10-20 high quality low cost research resources and tools
Questions and answers
SEARCH ENGINES
GOOGLE RULES!
Google is the resource that professional evaluators use to find research resources most often
A few words of caution: Google ‘filters’ results based on previous
searches Try searching in an alternate search engine
to double check your google results
ALTERNATE SEARCH ENGINES
DuckDuckGo https://duckduckgo.com/ Blekko http://blekko.com/ Ixquick https://ixquick.com/
Try searching your name on Google vs. these 3
HOT SEARCHING TIP #1
When searching Google… Use the site filter to limit to a particular
website or type of domain ( site:http://www.epa.gov) or site:edu
Use the filetype filter to limit your results to PDFs (filetype:PDFs)
More google searching tips can be found at:http://www.google.com/insidesearch/tipstricks/all.html
FREE FULL TEXT ARTICLES
Google Scholar scholar.google.comSubset of Google that focus on ‘academic’ literature Mendeley
http://www.mendeley.com/research-papers/
Crowd-sourcing site—many researchers have downloaded their work hereDirectory of Open Access Journals http://doaj.org/Somewhat of a ‘work in progress’ but does allow searching for articles
HOT SEARCH TIP #2
Tip: For Google Scholar:Use the Advanced Search by clicking on the downward facing carat on the right side of the search box
RESEARCH DATABASES
Excellent sources of high quality information—
Almost every field has a good free research database
Articles/information is often abstracted and indexed aiding searching
SOME EXAMPLES
(Health Sciences) PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
(Education) ERIC http://eric.ed.gov/ (Transportation) TRID http://trid.trb.org
/ For Science and Technology Resources
see my article.. http://www.infotoday.com/OnlineSearcher/Articles/Features/Fifty-Shades-of-Scientific-and-Technical-Grey-Literature-96758.shtml
HOT SEARCH TIP #3
Some publishers offer discounted rates for one-time access to their research resources
American Psychological Association (APA) offers a $11.95 24 hour pass to their 3 major databases including PsycINFO—
http://www.apa.org/pubs/databases/access/direct.aspx
DO YOUR CITATIONS LOOK LIKE THIS?
CITATION MANAGERS CAN HELP…
Organize your citations Citation information can be downloaded
directly from most search tools into many citation managers
Allow for PDFs to be attached to articles Can be shared between people if they are
using the same program Automatically creates in-text citations and
reference lists in a specified citation format (APA 5th, MLA)
FREE CITATION MANAGERS
Endnote Web http://www.myendnoteweb.com/
(There is a full version of Endnote which requires a subscription). Mendeley http://www.mendeley.com/ Zotero https://www.zotero.org/
TRACKING FEDERAL AND STATE LEGISLATION
Congress.gov New website developed by Library of Congress to track federal legislation http://beta.congress.gov/
National Conference of State Legislature List of State Billing Tracking Sites http://www.ncsl.org/research/telecommunications-and-information-technology/bill-tracking-and-subscription-services.aspx
Bill Track 50 – Search federal and state bills http://www.billtrack50.com/
GOVERNMENT REPORTS
Great sources for topical overviews, recent resources and up to date statistics
General Accounting Office http://www.gao.gov/
Congressional Research Service Open Access https://opencrs.com/
HOT SEARCH TIP #4
When searching databases use these 5 action words to find evaluation related articles on a particular topic
Assess, analyze, evaluate, measure, impact (“youth violence”) and (assess* or analyz* or
evalu* or measure* or impact*)
GREY LITERATURE
What is it? Essentially everything that is not a journal
article or a book Most evaluation-related works are grey
literature resources They are usually hard to find because they
are typically not included in the major databases (Google will pick up some but not all of them)
GREY LITERATURE RESOURCES
New York Academy of Medicine Grey Lit Report-- http://www.greylit.org/
Health sciences, health policy including evaluation Popline -- http://www.popline.org/ Reproductive health and family planning Defense Technical Information Center --
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/DOD sponsored publicly available research
QUESTIONS?
IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS LATER…
Always happy to chat about research questions and research resources
Monthly newsletter on research resources and tips for evaulators – if you are interested in getting it – email me: [email protected]
CONNECT WITH ME
Matthew Von Hendy Green Heron Information Services (240) 401-7433 [email protected] www.greenheroninfo.com LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/vonhendy Twitter @GreenHeronInfo
THANK YOU!
