The Library and Beyond
Most University Libraries have, in addition to their own catalogue, subcriptions to a range of online publications. Some of these are only available from campus networks, others you may be able to access if you acquire an ATHENS password. Consult your local library for details.
To go a little further afield, try BUBL, the British Universities Bibliographical Link: http://www.bubl.ac.uk, an interface to the vast information splurge that is the internet.
If you cannot find what you need in the library, you may need to look further afield and use ...
The Internet
Netcraft estimate that there are now close to 30 million web hosts connected to the internet, while the Google Search Engine has catalogue entries for over 3 billion web pages.
Despite the optimism of Internet pioneers who envisaged the 'world's libraries on your desktop', most people do not use the Internet for serious research. A few minutes watching Metacrawler's Metaspy service should confirm this.
Search Strategies
This will depend on your project and the kind of resources or information you are seeking.
- Link Sites: the 'Secondary Sources' of the Internet
- The Virtual Teachers Centre (http://vtc.ngfl.gov.uk/) is a link site in that it contains lots of links and pointers to other resources - as well as some of its own content. Other link sites are maintained by individuals - make sure they are up to date before you use them too heavily!
- Catalogues
- Catalogues are larger and more general than link sites, but still involve 'human' decisions about what makes it in and what doesn't. The best known is Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.co.uk).
- Search Engines
- Search Engines range from the 'smart' to the 'stupid'. The one I recommend because it is optimised for 'name' searches and doesn't seem to throw up too many duff results is Google (http://www.google.com). Google also allows you to refine your search very usefully, restricting your search to '.uk' or 'ac.uk' sites, for example. It also takes account of sloppy typing and will occasionally ask (rather sniffily) 'if you meant ....'
Smart Searching
Unless you are searching for a specific phrase e.g. "Children Act", the most useful sets of results come from searches which involve 4-5 individual non-'stopwords'.
So, for example, if I was looking for resources to help identify early signs of dyslexia in children, I might use Google. However, my search results might vary widely; and it is only once I use key phrases which are 'domain-specific' - in this case "Diagnostic Assessment", that I start to get the kinds of results I really after. The dangers of searching for a very specific phrase or sentence are amply illustrated here, with the phrase "how do I know if a child has dyslexia?" returning a single result, pointing to an unrepresentative page!
| Search String | Results | Notes |
| dyslexia | 362000 | up from about 115000 in 2000 |
| dyslexia early diagnosis | 13400 | - |
| dyslexia early signs | 11800 | - |
| dyslexia early indicators | 5050 | - |
| how do I know if a child has dyslexia? | 30400 | Stopwords ("do", "I", "if", "a") ignored) |
| early "diagnostic assessment" dyslexia | 752 | note "exact phrase" in quotation marks |
| "how do I know if a child has dyslexia?" | 1 | An earlier version of the page you are looking at now! |
Sifting the Sources
Now you have found a list of potential sources, you will need to be discriminating about which you use and the weight you attach to them. There is a rough(very rough) hierarchy of web resources as follows:
- Real things that are also online
- Institutional material which are only online, but (seem) permanent
- Personal material which are only online, but (seem) permanent
- Email and mailing list contributions
- Moderated Newsgroups
- Unmoderated Newsgroups, IRC and Chatrooms
Bear in mind the following when assessing electronic sources
- The one type of publication scarce on the WWW is the 'textbook'.
- One area which is better represented as a result of the ease with which work can be published on the WWW is 'work in progress' - either on personal sites or in conference proceedings.
- Email, despite legally being regarded as a publication, should regarded by researchers as having the same status as a letter (e.g. 'pers. comm.')
- North American content still outweighs other English-language material
- Many websites are defunct, but never get removed. Check 'last updated' dates, or look for tell-tale signs of decrepitude: broken links,'future events' which have now passed, maths examples in pounds, shillings and pence etc.
- Be careful of .com and .co sites - commercial providers!
- Also be careful of .org sites - meaning of this suffix is not clear. It was originally intended for use by non-profit organisations, but this is not enforced.
- Look for sources which themselves cite other work - avoid 'stream of consciousness' websites!
Citation of Electronic Sources
This is based on print source citation, but there are one or two problem areas:
- Author: if not apparent, use organisation responsible for website
- Date: use date of publication if available, else 'last update', else 'nd'
- Title: the title which uniquely identifies the resource
- Publication Details: the publishing organisation, together with the full address of the resource
- Page Numbers: if available (e.g. on a PDF file). The page numbers which are added by your printer are not reliable - they depend on font and paper size.
- Date Accessed: unique to electronic resources!
Citation of Electronic Sources - an example
Lets suppose we have found an electronic source we want to cite. This example is from 'Guardian Unlimited', so it has the associated status of the 'Guardian' newspaper. The in-text citation might look like this (remember that you must cite all works you refer to, not just those from which you take 'direct quotations'):
Whelan and Whelan (2000) describe how the Rwandan Government has "implemented an unofficial policy to introduce English into education, motivated more by necessity than by choice."
The bibliographical entry at the end of the essay would then 'match' the in-text citation and point the reader to the original source:
Whelan, J. and Whelan, E. (2000) 'Rwanda builds with English' (Guardian Unlimited: http://education.guardian.co.uk/tefl/story/0,5500,146430,00.html). Accessed 02.05.2001.
The 'publication date' and the 'date accessed' bracket the period when the material was available online and in theory allow researchers to search the archives of websites in the event of content being moved or updated - particularly inportant in the case of 'news' sites with rapid turnover of content.
If you are planning to write for publication, you will find that most journals provide guidelines for authors as to how they should format their work and cite sources and will ususually provide some models of how to cite specific kinds of source, including online ones. Some go further and will provide you with a 'stylesheet' or 'template' into which you write your work, thus guaranteeing that your work conforms to their hosue style.
Keeping a Record
You should be aware of the difference between 'saving' a document (which takes a physical copy) and 'bookmarking' it into your list of 'favourites' on your browser. If you plan on making a lot of use of a particular resource, save it or even better print it out!