Chapters 5 and 8

Chapter five of the Bedford Researcher talks about evaluating your sources. It breaks the sources down into several categories that should each be looked at and evaluated individually to determine whether or not you would be useful to your research project. The chapter says that you should evaluate the source’s relevance, the objectivity of the author, the objectivity of the publisher, the timeliness, whether or not it is comprehensive, and the genre when determining its usefulness. The chapter also talked about how to best evaluate web sources, by examining the domain, so you can be sure only to use reliable sources.

I think this chapter is going to be very useful over the next week as I continue to gather sources for my research project. Having the evaluation process broken down into easily comprehensible steps will make it easier for me to review my sources and determine the usefulness of potential sources as I continue to look online. The information in the chapter seemed somewhat obvious, but it was the types of obvious that is easily forgotten, like when you think you know the meaning of a word but then can’t explain it to anyone. I think in the back of my mind, my head was thinking, “of course you look at the bias of the author when you are evaluating!” but the rest of my brain wasn’t necessarily following that advice.

 

Chapter eight was all about researching information digitally. It breaks down the process into preparing your search by identifying keys words or phrases from your proposal plan to use in the search. It then goes on to explain how to search with an online library catalog, a database, a Web search site, or media search sites. The chapter explains the uses of each for not only finding specific sources, but also for connecting you to similar articles or webpages to help in the search for sources. It also describes how you can limit or edit you searches to find sources with only specific, relevant information instead of vaguely connected pages that are unhelpful to your project topic.

Like before, there were pieces of this chapter that I felt were somewhat obvious or redundant, but at the same time it was all useful and helpful information to have. I can’t say that I’ve ever really gone so far as to evaluate the search engine I was using, I have always just stuck with Google unless instructed to go somewhere else. What I found to be the most useful about this chapter is that while each section was describing how best to use a database or online library, it was also providing the leading sites to use for finding specific kinds of information, be it audio, video, images, etc.