Skip to Main Content

GNED 1403 - Winter 2023 Library Session #1

 

Session OutlineStock image picture of a human figure with a question mark.

Here is a plan for what we will cover today:

  1. Go over assignment details.

  2. Provide an overview of how to search LibrarySearch and Google Scholar for scholarly sources.

  3. Learn the difference between primary and secondary sources and scholarly and non-scholarly sources.

  4. Practice information evaluation skills.

  5. Talk about finding and using images and image citation.

  6. Show a couple of different ways to get help if you have questions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Public Domain MarkThis work (Question Mark Symbol Icon Character, by Peggy_Marco), identified by Pixabay, is free of known copyright restrictions.

Assignment Details

Blog and Critical Reflection (Due late February/early March 2023)

  • Create a blog about a topic of your choice that you feel passionate and excited about.


Blog and Required Blog Components:

  • 2 short blog entries related to your topic of choice

    • 3-5 paragraphs per entry.

    • Research isn't required but, if needed, must be cited in APA 7 style appropriately.

  • An "about the author" section

    • 3-4 pages double-spaced.

  • Appropriate images

    • At minimum, each blog entry should have an accompanying image or visual (it can be realistic, a drawing, a symbol, etc.).

    • You also need to include an appropriate image for your "about the author" section.

    • In the blog, images should be captioned per APA 7 style standards and a corresponding reference entry should be made in the reference list for your Critical Reflection and within the Blog itself - either by way of a separate tab for references or underneath the blog entry. This webpage has excellent information on referencing images in APA 7 style.

  • Design elements

    • Think about design elements and how you can use them to enhance your messaging.


Critical Reflection:

  • Approximately 4 pages double-spaced not including references, formatted according to APA 7 style guidelines.

  • In this section, you will explain your design/visual component choices. How do design and visual elements (including images) reinforce your message? You’ll need to provide proper foundational information (from our readings) and examples from your blog to create a robust discussion.

  • You must also examine how you uses ethos, logos, and pathos to establish rapport with your readers. Please use specific examples from your narrative and explain how these examples fit the definitions of ethos, logos, and pathos.

  • In this section, you will need to cite our readings and lectures, as well as any research you may do (for example, you may need to look up information about a font. Please use reputable websites). Remember, you need to follow APA 7 style rules for in-text citations and for your References page.

  • You do not need to include an Abstract, per Little Seagull exemplar but the rest of your formatting should follow the sample paper. As this is a personal reflection, you can write in the first person while weaving in your reasons and rationale.
     

Conducting Academic Research With LibrarySearch 

LibrarySearch is MRU Library's one-stop search interface/catalogue that brings together resources across format, time, and subject. 

We have about 1.3 million e-resources and 221,000 physical resources in our collection, and LibrarySearch searches across those.

Things to remember when using LibrarySearch:

  1. Sign in to save searches, items, and to request materials.

  2. Use the pin icon to save books and articles to your Favorites for future reference.

  3. Use the filters on the right. You will use Availability, Resource Type, and Date filters most often. Filter settings can be "locked in" so that you don't have to reapply them to every search that you make.

  4. Some items may not be available, however, you can request unavailable items using what is called interlibrary loan.

  5. When viewing an item record, scroll down to the Get it (for hardcopy/physical items) or Access options (for electronic items) section to get access to the item.


Helpful Search Operators to Use in LibrarySearch

You can use what are called search operators to search in a way to combine or omit different terms by telling the search engine exactly what you want and this can help you save some time (and frustration!)

  • Use quotation marks to keep specific phrases together:

    • "public space"

    • "inclusive design"

    • "fast fashion"

    • "#FreeBritney"

  • Use AND to combine search terms (LibrarySearch automatically creates an AND when you write terms one after another, but it can be good practice to use an AND to help you understand the searches that you build) (AND narrows your search):

    • "inclusive design" AND "public libraries"

  • Use OR to connect two or more similar terms (OR broadens your search):

    • "climate change" OR "global warming"

  • Use wild cards to substitute a letter or suffix with a symbol:

    • access* (in this example, the search access* will search for records that contain strings such as accessible and accessibility)

Conducting Academic Research With Google Scholar

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is another great way to find high quality resources.

Besides providing links to resources in MRU databases, Google Scholar links to online repositories that contain articles the author has been allowed to upload.  Academia.edu and ResearchGate are among the repositories searched by Google Scholar.

By clicking on the Settings icon, you can select library links to show library access for up to 5 libraries (type in Mount Royal and click on save).  If you are logged into MRU library, links should automatically populate if you are running a Google search in another window. 

Google Scholar has a nifty citation chaining function. The Cited by function will forward you to indexed scholarly material that has cited a resource that you may be interested in. The Related articles link will direct you to similar articles that may have the same metadata or keywords. 


Helpful Search Operators to Use in Google Scholar

Google Scholar's Advanced Search is found by clicking the menu icon in the top left.

You can also add search operators to Google Scholar searches to build your own custom advanced searches in similar ways to LibrarySearch:

  • Use quotation marks to keep specific phrases together:

    • "climate change"

  • Avoid using AND to combine search terms with Google Scholar, as the search engine automatically creates ANDs between concepts and sometimes adding an additional AND can confuse the search syntax.

  • Use OR to connect two or more similar terms:

    • "climate change" OR "global warming"

  • Use wild cards to substitute a letter or suffix with a symbol:

    • ethic* (in this example, the search ethic* will search for records that contain strings such as ethics, ethical, and ethically)

  • Use intitle: to limit your search to search terms only appearing in the title of a resource:

    •  intitle:"climate change"

  • Use filetype: to specify the type of file you would like to retrieve in your results:

    • filetype:pdf

  • Use site: to limit your search to specific web domains:

    • site:.edu

    • site:.gc.ca

  • Use source: to limit your search to results from a specific publication:

    • source:global challenges

  • Combine operators to power search!

    • intitle:"climate change" source:global environmental change

Figure 1

Peter Steiner's Famous 1993 New Yorker Cartoon Illustrating an Issue Central to Information Evaluation


Note. From "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" [Cartoon], by P. Steiner, 1993, Wikimedia (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/Internet_dog.jpg).


Evaluating Information

It is good to find lots of search results, but, in order to use information skilfully, you need to know how to evaluate that information to determine whether a specific resource is appropriate to use in a specific use case (i.e. for a specific assignment).

The phrase "evaluating information" actually stands in for a wide range of judgments that we make about information in many different contexts, whether those judgments are about relevance, timeliness, quality, etc.

Librarians have developed several different acronyms to help people remember useful criteria to use in information evaluation. One of my personal favourites is RADAR!


RADAR stands for

Relevance

Authority

Date

Accuracy

Reason for Creation


We can ask the following questions to help us assess each criterion:

Relevance:

  • Does this source fit my topic?

  • What is this source's intended audience?

    • Is that intended audience appropriate for my use case in this assignment?

Authority:

  • Is/are the creator(s) of this source clearly identified or known to us?

  • How important is it in this use case to trust the source's creator(s)?

    • If it is important, why should we trust the source's creator(s)?

    • Is the source's creator credentialed or an expert in their field?

Date:

  • Is the creation or publication date of this source identified or known to us?

  • Is this source too old?

Accuracy:

  • Do this source's facts "check out"?

  • Does the source have references of its own?

Reason for Creation (take your best guess at this question using judgments from earlier criteria):

  • Why was this source made?

  • Was this source made to sell a product or service, to inform/educate, to entertain, etc?

Scholarly vs. Popular Sources

scholarly publication contains articles written by experts in a particular field. The primary audience of these articles is other experts.

Many of these publications are also referred to as "peer-reviewed," academic, or "refereed." They all mean essentially the same thing and refer to the editorial and publication process in which scholars in the same field review the research and findings before the article is published.

 

Scholarly / Peer-Reviewed

Popular / Not Scholarly (but possibly still credible!)

Author

  • Expert

  • Journalist / professional writer

Review Process

  • Reviewed by an editorial board or other experts ("peers")

  • Reviewed by an editor

Audience /
Language

  • Scholars and students

  • Technical language

  • General public

  • Easy to understand

Content

  • Original research

  • Uses previously published literature for background

  • News and practical information

  • Uses a variety of sources for background 

Sources

  • Always cited

  • Sometimes cited

Examples

  • Peer-reviewed articles

  • Scholarly books

  • Literature reviews, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses

  • Theses and dissertations

  • Magazine articles

  • Newspaper articles

  • Blog articles

  • Encyclopedias

  • Textbooks

  • Websites

  • Social media


Some Helpful Questions for Identifying a Scholarly/Academic Article

  1. What are the author’s credentials? Was it written by an expert?

  2. Was it published in a journal (is there a DOI?)? (If you are not sure if a source is a journal article, you can enter the title of the publication into Ulrichs Web to check.)

  3. Does it use academic or more technical language?

  4. Does it includes a reference list of sources that it is citing?

  5. How long is it? (Scholarly articles are typically longer than popular or news articles.)

  6. Does it have a "Received" and "Accepted" date on it?

  7. Is it an actual article? (Sometimes other types of content are included in scholarly publications, such as editorials/opinion pieces and book reviews. Make sure you are looking at an article.)

Activity: Is It Scholarly?

To make sure we are all on the same page, let's put our knowledge to the test.

Skim the following resources available through the links keeping in mind the characteristics we have discussed in class (for example: what is this information and where did it come from? Was it written by an expert? Where is this source published?).

Vote whether you think this source is Scholarly or Not Scholarly.

Source 1

Scholarly: 13 votes (30.23%)
Not Scholarly: 30 votes (69.77%)
Total Votes: 43
Scholarly: 29 votes (100%)
Not Scholarly: 0 votes (0%)
Total Votes: 29
Scholarly: 2 votes (5.56%)
Not Scholarly: 34 votes (94.44%)
Total Votes: 36
Scholarly: 33 votes (89.19%)
Not Scholarly: 4 votes (10.81%)
Total Votes: 37
Scholarly: 2 votes (7.14%)
Not Scholarly: 26 votes (92.86%)
Total Votes: 28
Scholarly: 2 votes (6.9%)
Not Scholarly: 27 votes (93.1%)
Total Votes: 29
Scholarly: 4 votes (14.29%)
Not Scholarly: 24 votes (85.71%)
Total Votes: 28
Scholarly: 25 votes (75.76%)
Not Scholarly: 8 votes (24.24%)
Total Votes: 33
Scholarly: 11 votes (33.33%)
Not Scholarly: 22 votes (66.67%)
Total Votes: 33
Scholarly: 27 votes (100%)
Not Scholarly: 0 votes (0%)
Total Votes: 27

Image Sources

Photos:

Image Collection

Contains images from Archive Photos, Canadian Press, Motion Picture & Television Archive, and MapQuest as well as a variety of images from the public domain.

ARTstor

ARTstor is a digital library of nearly 1,000,000 images with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes.

Oxford Art Online

Provides access to more than 23,000 subject entries, 21,000 biographies, 40,000 image links and 5,000 images.

Bridgeman Art Library Archive

Founded in 1972, the Bridgeman Art Library works with museums art galleries and artists to make the best art available for reproduction. It represents a large part of the complete collection chosen for its suitability for web use. Over 17000 individual works of art are featured here cross-referenced and linked using Bridgeman's own categories.

LIFE Photo Archive

Search photographs from the LIFE Photo Archive.


Images on the Web:

Flickr Creative Commons

Creative Commons licensing offers an alternative to full copyright. Search the collection of Flickr images that have been offered for use with CC licenses.

Wikimedia Commons

Search freely usable media files.

Pexels

Stock photos

Tineye

Searches for images that match an uploaded file or another image on the web - great for tracing original creators of images, rights holders, or just finding more information.

Google Images Search

Great for finding high-profile images.


Archival Collections:

Glenbow Museum & Archives

Search the photographs collection in the Archives.

Alberta on Record

Search for digital material in the Archives Society of Alberta’s online portal.

Library & Archives Canada Image Search

Search for photographs, drawings, maps and art.


For more information on finding images you can use in your work, consult the Copyright Guide's Copyright friendly image resources section.


Citing Images in your Assignment

Consult MRU's advisory of image citation in APA here.

Images that you refer to in your assignments must always be cited both parenthetically in text and in your reference list.

Images that you reproduce in your assignment (like this research paper) must also be cited in-text with a figure number, title, and a figure note.

Example 1

Figure 1

 Portrait of a Woman by Raphael, 1505-1506.

Portrait of a woman by Raphael

Note. Source: (Raphael, 1505-1506).

Note: Some instructors (like Professor Broitman-Levandovsky) allow you to use a typical APA parenthetical in-text reference (as in Figure 1 above) under your image instead of a more formal figure note.

Reference list entry:

In addition to the in-text citation, this image would also be cited in your reference list like this:

 

Example 2

Figure 2

Lava the Sled Dog

Note. Source: (Denali National Park and Preserve, 2013).

 

Reference list entry:

Denali National Park and Preserve. (2013). Lava [Photograph]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/denalinps/8639280606/

If the image has no title, provide a description of the image in your own words, e.g.:

Denali National Park and Preserve. (2013). [Photograph of blue-eyed dog in the snow]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/denalinps/8639280606/

 

Example 3

Figure 3 

The Artist With Their Work

Note. Source: (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2019).

 

Reference list entry:

Philadelphia Museum of Art [@philamuseum]. (2019, December 3). “It’s always wonderful to walk in and see my work in a collection where it’s loved, and where people are [Photograph]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/B5oDnnNhOt4/

  • In this case there is no title, so we use the first 20 words of the post’s text as its title (according to the direction of APA style).

 

Example 4: Stock image citations

Figure 4

The Ōnaruto Bridge in the Evening

Note. Source: (Kanenori, 2022).

 

Reference list entry:

Kanenori. (2022, September 8). [Photograph of the Ōnaruto Bridge in the evening]. Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/photos/landscape-evening-onaruto-bridge-7438429/

 

Example 5: Integrating your own images

Figure 5

A Rainbow in Edmonton

My own supplied image does not need a note or source attribution in APA style.

 

Reference list entry:

My own supplied image does not need a reference list entry in APA style.


Activities

1. How would we properly integrate this image into our research paper?

2. How would we properly integrate this image into our research paper?

(Answers here!)

Citation Help

GNED 1403 - Winter 2023 Library Session #2

Here is a helpful document to assist you with the completion of Assignment #2: The Podcast.

Librarian

Profile Photo
Library Systems
Contact:
Room G206
6784