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Library Research for Marine Invertebrates
Prepared by Anne Turhollow for Biology 515
Fall 2005
Evaluating What You Find
As you survey your reams of photocopies and stacks of books, how can you tell
if you're done searching or need to find more material?
- Do you find that your references keep repeating themselves?
- You're done if you have searched several indexes and you just keep turning
up the same books and journal articles.
- Are there key articles that most (if not all) your materials mention?
- Make sure you find those.
- Are you overwhelmed by the amount of information?
- Narrow or focus your topic by geographic location, etc.
- Are there any gaps in the material?
- Go back to the indexes
and see if you can locate material just in those limited areas.
- Do you not have enough information?
- Consider using another journal
index or using the citation
index listed in the Searching for Information in Journals section.
- Broaden your search; if you restricted it to a taxonomic group, drop that
restriction.
It is important to determine your criteria for evaluating the relevance of
retrieved books and journal articles. These can include:
- Authority of the author(s)
- Date of publication
- Type of publication
- Relevance of content
- Intended audience
- References cited
- Cited or reviewed by others
Some additional web sites with more information about evaluation of resources
(especially Internet resources) include:
- Evaluating Sources of
Information
- Provides an overview of evaluating both print and electronic resources.
- How
to Critically Analyze Information Sources
- Focus is on how to evaluate print resources.
- ICYouSee:
T is for Thinking
- A tutorial by John R. Henderson of the Ithaca College Library on critically
evaluating Internet materials.
- Thinking
Critically about World Wide Web Resources
- A comprehensive set of questions for evaluating web resources. By Esther
Grassian, UCLA College Library.
- Thinking
Critically about Discipline-Based World Wide Web Resources
- Also by Esther Grassian, this site deals with evaluating web sites as opposed
to a single document.
This page http://infodome.sdsu.edu/research/guides/class/biol515evaluate.shtml is maintained by C. Anne Turhollow.
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for your questions, comments, and suggestions.
File saved 08/03/07 10:15 PDT
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