Research!

Over the last three classes I had had some research techniques reviewed for me and some others introduced for the first time. I would like to spend a small amount of time reviewing the ones that really interested me.

Firstly, Credo reference! This is an excellent reference tool that can be used to help you search terms you don’t understand. Credo reference provides dictionary definitions and encyclopedia information to help you obtain more information about your topic. Rather than using multiple sources to obtain different definitions they are available all in one location. The downside to this reference is it can only be used by members, so either your university library must have a subscription or you must create your own.

Next, Web of Science. I thought this was a really cool search tool. If you type in the title of a particular journal article or book, it will tell you how many references are in that article and it can also show you how many times this particular article has been referenced. This could be useful in determining how credible the article is. If many other people have referenced the article, chances are it had lots of good and credible information in it.


Today, I was informed of other search engines over and above Google. I know, what’s better than Google?” Turns out there are a lot! First off Clusty.com. The search results are returned based on relevance, rather than popularity like Google. So you might be able to find more of the information you want rather than what others have found interesting. In a quick topic search for my term paper, I have already found a few references that I want to explore that I did not find with a Google search.


Next, Kartoo.com. I think the coolest thing for this search engine is the visualization. Instead of returning the typical list of search results, Kartoo has this option to return in a web form. Once you are in this web, you can further refine your search by selecting the topics you are interested in and removing the topics you do not want. For visual learners, this option is fantastic!


One more thing about almost all search engines is you can specify the file type in the advanced search. So if you are looking mainly for journal articles you can select pdf files, or if you want powerpoint presentations from recent conferences, you can select ppt as a file type.

So thanks to Runte for the info on search engines‼