Thursday, 13 December 2012

week 9- Information Analysis



                                
                  In week 9, I learnt about how to evaluate internet sources.At first,I would like to tell why we need to evaluate the information sources.We need to evaluate information sources to judge the quality or appropriateness of information for a particular query or user, to spread the information over the internet by anyone without regard to accuracy, validity, or bias and for some librians and library users to make effective use of the internet.

                                      
Here are some criteria for evaluating Internet Sources:
Criteria for evaluating Internet Sources
  1. Purpose
  2. Scope/Comprehensiveness/Coverage
  3. Authority
  4. Audience
  5. Information Content
  6. Design and layout
  7. Access/Workability
                               
1. Purpose
           Resource should make their purpose obvious at first sight. If a site provides its own mission statement, the user can verify whether the content matches this statement. A good resource will not be ambiguous and will not deflect potential users, due to it's poor communication of purpose.

2. Scope
          The resource covers a subject adequately with
  • Breadth: which all the aspects of the subject are covered,
  • Depth: the level of detail in the subject which the resource goes,
  • Time: which the information in the resource is limited to certain time period,
  • Format: some kind of internet resources, e.g, telnet, Gopher, FTP
3. Authority
  • Institution- ".edu", ".com", ".gov"                         
  • Author- author's professional affiliations
  • Resource- verifiable information
4. Audience- intended users such as a subject expert, a layperson or a school student.

                                         
5. Information Content
  • Accuracy- documented origin of the content, political or ideological biases
  • Currency- static or reliant resource, a version number for software, frequency of updates
  • Uniqueness- the information which can be avaliable in other forms
6. Design and Layout


                             
  • Organization- individual Web pages, a text-only version, visual similarities in all sections
  • Navigability- location of particular pages, internal links, logically through the sites
  • Styles and functionality- general layout of resource functional, well function, graphic design
  • Colour- plain background which the text can easily be read
  • Multimedia- creativity, quality of the image and sound, and interactivity
7. Access/Workability
  • Ease of use- easy for the intended audience to connect to the site.
  • Feel friendly- the site user is friendly with the effective interface.
                                             
                            
         These are all about evaluation of information resources. I hope all of you've known how to evaluate information sources and the criteria to evaluate these sources.

           

Tuesday, 11 December 2012

week 8 - Source Integration

Source Integration                            
               In this week, I continued learning about one of the citation and documenting information sources, source integration. As far as I learnt, source integration includes:
  • Summarizing,
  • Paraphrasing,
  • Quoting the text.
             We need to integrate sources to highlight a particularly striking phrase, sentence of phrase by quoting the original, to distant yourself from the original by quoting it in order to cue readers that the words are not your own and to expand the breadth and depth of your writing. Let's move to the classification of source integration!
  • Summarizing
          It is putting the main ideas into your own words, including only the main points. Summaries are significantly shorter than the original. They take a broad over view of source material. Instead of using many direct quotations in an essay, it is better to paraphrase and summarize your sources whenever possible. In summarizing, make sure to use your own words.
  • Paraphrasing
             Paraphrasing involves putting a passage from source material into your own words. Paraphrases are usually shorter than but may be the same length as the original passage. They take a more confused segment of the source and condense it slightly. We can use paraphrasing as an alternative to direct quotation. It can be used for short passages.
  • Quoting
              In quoting, we have to use the author's words exactly and use quotations mark only for short quotations. If our quotations have more than 40 words, we don't need to use quotation marks. Quotations must be identical to the original. They must match the source document word for word and must be attributed to the original author.
Signal Phrases and In-Text Citation
Signal Phrases- introduce someone else's work. They signal that the words and ideas that are about to be offered belong to someone other than the author of the paper.
In-Text Citation- are the parenthetical pieces of information that appear usually at the end of a quote, paraphrase or summary( though they sometimes appear before).
    Well, these are what I learnt all about Source Integration in this week. I hope u will enjoy it.



Friday, 7 December 2012

week 7-Citation and Documenting Information Sources in APA Style

What is APA all about?             
          As I learnt in this week, APA is American Psychological Association. It provides guidelines for publication in Social Science Journals (such as Psychology, Sociology, Education, and Nursing). APA style is used for:
  • Term Papers
  • Research Reports
  • Empirical Studies
  • Literature Reviews
  • Theoretical Articles
  • Methodology
  • Case Study
Formats of APA citation from different kind of sources
Books with one author
         Author. (Year). Title of Book. Place of Publication : Publisher.
Books with two or three authors
         List all authors. Use ampersand (&) before the last author. (Year). Title of Book. Place of Publication : Publisher.
Books with more than six authors
         First author until six authors, et al. (Year). Title. Place of Publication : Publisher.
Cooperate Bodies as author
          Cooperate author. (Year). Title of Book. Place of Publication : Publisher. If Government bodies start with the country or the state.
Book- more than first Edition
          Author. (Year). Title of Book (Edition.). Place of Publication : Publisher.
Edited Books
           Editor. (Ed./Eds.). (Year). Title. Place of Publication : Publisher.
Journal Article
           Writer of the article. (Year.). Title of the article. Title of Journal, Volume (issue/ no.), page.
Dictionary
            Editor. (Ed.). (Year). Name of Dictionary(Edition, Volumes).  Place of Publication : Publisher.
Conference Paper
           Writer of the paper. (Year). Title of the paper. In Editor of the proceeding (Ed./Eds.), Title of the proceeding (page). Place of Publication : Publisher.
Thesis
         Author. (Year). Title. Unpublished master's thesis/doctoral dissertation, name of the university, place.