Self-Assessment

This quarter in my Library 1210 class although I was placed in the class fairly late in the quarter I have been able to learn how to star with a fairly broad research question or general research question or topic, and take that topic as a starting point and develop broader research topics and more narrow research topics. I have also learned how to use boolean phrasing to search for keywords in databases, I have also been able to learn how to evaluate my search strategies and change them as necessary by reviewing the results returned back to me from my initial search and change my search strategies as needed to return back 100 or less search results when researching a topic. I can take use of online library catalogs and online databases through the CSU, East Bay library website and use them to my advantage when researching a topic for any school assignments to find relevant sources of information relating to topics being searched and incorporate the information into the assignments being done for class. I have also learned how to track my search strategies and techniques and explain them and how to cite material used in the research. Weaknesses I have identified in my information literacy growth have been to memorize and completely understand how to recognize and articulate an information need, along with understanding completely and how to apply completely the principles of information ethics. In the next three to six months I will continue to view my blogs that I have posted for my Library 1210 class and continue to use the information and strategies I have learned and understand in searching for information on given topics for class assignments along with personal quests for information on specific topics. I will also try to understand the information covered in class that I haven't been able to understand completely. If encountered with problems when searching for information that I can't solve by myself I will take action to seek out my teacher for Library 1210 and ask for help in understanding how to fix the problem I'm experiencing.

Final Experiential Exercise

My topic chosen is on pacifism, but I came up with the question, how does pacifism counter violence in the world? This was done to narrow my topic from just the general topic of pacifism. Pacifism is a rejection of war and all forms of violence, usually stemming from a religious standpoint and being a form of idealism. Morals and the refusal to bear arms fall under the category of pacifism as well. Violence being the complete opposite, and pacifism is seen as a peaceful way to settle disputes in society. I first conducted my search starting with the ProQuest Newspapers database found through the csueastbay library databases a-z. I chose to start here because I felt that an area concerning newspaper articles would be a more relevant place to begin searching for information on violence and pacifism that has occurred in the world. I was looking for real life events that could be compared with violence and techniques of pacifism to settle disputes in the world. I then decided to use the Academic Search Premier database, because it generally has pretty good results that will come back relating to your searched research topic. A good portion of the information held in Academic Search Premier tends to be more specific to researched topics as well which is why I decided to use the database after ProQuest Newspaper. Following the use of Academic Search Premier I decided to go to the web using the Google database, because I wanted to now get generally the most dificult part of researching a topic out of the way because of how broad of a range of material will be given back to you in your search results, possibly being the area of the most work with evaluation of websites to check for relevance and up to date material about your topic. Next I decided to use the Philosopher's Index as my subject-specific database with my search. I chose to use the Philosopher's Index because of the reason of the ideals and beliefs held in the topic of pacifism being more centered on a philisophical stand point than anything else really, and I believed would come back with the most results holding relevance to my topic. I decided to use the Library Catalog last because I wanted to use to database program that I am the most comfortable with last this time around so I can get more experience with using less familiar and uncomfortable database programs for research topic of mine.For ProQuest Newspaper I decided to use the search terms violence AND pacifism, searched in citation and abstract, with all dates selected, and full text only formats. I wanted to get all I could concerning the topics of violence and pacifism which is why I decided to use that specific boolean phrase: AND, with the search being conducted in the citation and abstract it allows me to view the relevance of the newspaper article results are to my researched subject without having to look through the entire text of each entry, allowing me to select the article with the most relevant abstract to my topic and then read through the full text of the article. In Academic Search Premier I decided to use the boolean phrasing (violence)AND(pacifism) searched in the abstract or author-supplied abstract, the search mode was boolean/phrase, full text was selected, the document type was all, I selected the publication date for January, 2000 to December, 2008 because I wanted to get the most recent information within the past ten years in order to obtain relevant information on my topic that would be related to current events and current information on my topic, all was selected as the publication type so I could get information in all types so I could get more results in my search, PDF full text was also selected, along with all pages selected. In Google I decided to use the boolean terms "violence AND pacifism" to include all of what I could get on violence and pacifism together in attempt to get information with contrasts and about how pacifism can come about during times of violence. I then selected the most relevant title from the results page on Google which was titled violence and pacifism which was a .org site which I prefer using because of the information being presented on the sites tends to generally be trustworthy information from a more scholarly stand point due to the website being run by an organization. The website was also copyrighted in 2008 so the information on the site is up to date and will be more reliable than information copyrighted at earlier dates. The ProQuest Newspaper article that I selected was titled, "Pacifism a Difficult Value to Adhere to Absolutely," and was published in 2007 so it was also recent being within a year to the current year. The Academic Search Premier article was titled, "Notes on Pacifism", and was published in 2007 as well. After using Google using the Philosopher's Index, a subject-specific database I used the search terms (pacifism AND violence) searched in the abstract, I swtiched the phrasing around like this to see if it turned up different types of result for my topic but still including everything concerning pacifism and violence, with arts and humanites listed as the change because pacifism in my point of view would be more discussed in the philosophical sense in this area, the date range was selected as being between 2000 to 2008 for more current information on the topic, the results were limited to english only, with full text on JSTOR, the publication type was selected as journal articles because I wanted less information than an entire book with more of a reporter's spin on it, I selected unlimited for the genre, and the time period was marked as unlimited because I wanted all the information I could get on the topic that was updated and published within a current time frame, full format was selected under show, and I decided to use ten results per page. I seleced the article in the results titled, "Personally Committed to Nonviolence: Towards a Vindication of Personal Pacifism", which seemed to be the most relevant result given back from the search for my topic using Philosopher's Index. It was the most relevant to myself because it shows how pcifism is the total opposite of violence which is the question I'm trying to answer for my research topic. When using the Library Catalog I used I had to change the search terms to (pacifism) AND (violence), with the results limited to available items, with any selectec for the location, computer media selected under the material type, and english selected as the language along with the results being sorted by relevance. I changed the search up in the catalog in this way in order to get back results which of which I only recieved ten so this was a slightly tricky topic to obtain results for using the Library Catalog database. I chose to select the book titled, "Stop the Next War Now: Effective Responses to Violence and Terrorism", I decided to choose this selection because the published date was recent being published in 2005 and it concerns the acts of violence in war and terrorism being able to be curved by the uses of pacifism which relates directly to my topic in the sense that pacifism is a different means of solving problems rather than using violence, which made this choice relevant to the topic I was searching.References:Steven Kalas (2007, October 9). Pacifism a difficult value to adhere to absolutely. Las Vegas Review - Journal,E.2. Retrieved December 3, 2008, from ProQuest Newsstand database. (Document ID: 1361431871).

Rosenwald, L. (2007). Notes on Pacifism. . (pp. 93-106). Antioch Review, Inc. Retrieved December 3, 2008, from Academic Search Premier database.

Zahn, G., C. (1961). Violence and pacifism. World View Magazine Article, 4(5). Retrieved from http://worldview.cceia.org/archive/worldview/1961/05/1354.html

Reitan, E. (2000). Personally committed to nonviolence: Towards a personal vindication of personal pacifism. Philosopher's Index, 10(2), 30-41. Retrieved from http://csaweb114v.csa.com/ids70/view_record.php?id=7&recnum=8&log=from_res&SID=dvn7v20gd8mn7jjbfhoqev8kb4&mark_id=search%3A7%3A28%2C0%2C9

Benjamin, M., & Evans, J. (Eds.). (2005). Stop the next war now: Effective responses to violence and terrorism. Maui, Hi: Inner Ocean Pub.

Two complex research questions that I came up with are how has pacifism influenced non-violence protests, and in what ways in pacifism used in current time in the United States of America? Two additional databases that I would use to search for more information are Britannica Online, and I would use another online database to obtain more differentiating results on the web such as Yahoo.

Experiential Excercise

My research topic was non-verbal communication, which I learned goes on constantly with humans without recognition all the time. We use non-verbal communication with facial gestures, body gestures, and eye movements. Non-verbal communication is used too display messages of superiority or dominance, messages that don't want to be conveyed verbally, and to enhance meanings or emphasis on verbal communication. At first I started with the csueastbay library catalog, because it is generally the easiest database for me to use and generally gives back the most results with the most relevancy to myself. I am also the most comfortable with using the csueastbay library catalog. After finding useful information relating to my topic in the library catalog I moved on to using ProQuest Newspapers because newspapers also tend to have very useful information in them that you can generally rely on. Newspaper sources in my point of view tend to be more scholarly oriented and the journalists or authors that write the articles in newspapers are doing research themselves, which is what I'm doing on non-verbal communication. In the library catalog the search terms I used were (non-verbal)AND(communication) with the search results limited to all available texts, the location was any, the material type was any, and the language was marked as english. I decided to use these search terms so I could try and get material directly related to non-verbal communication and so I could get materials related to both sides rather than materials that were one sided. In ProQuest Newspapers the search terms I used were nonverbal communication AND behavior searched in the citation and abstract, limited to full texts, I chose to use these search terms so I could get results related to the behavior aspects of non-verbal communication. Then I used Academic Search Premier with the search terms (communication)AND(body language) in all text, with boolean/phrase selected for search mode, publication type was selected as periodical, documentation type was selected as all, and the search was limited to full text. I changed up my seach terms and form so I could get some more results in my search and I could encorproate a different take on nonverbal communication by labeling it as communication and body language. I then searched in a subject specific database called Sociological Abstracts, with the search terms (non-verbal+communication). The search was searched with the keywords, in the social sciences area, with the date range from 1999-2008, limited to english only, with results in full format. I chose to change my search up this way so I could get more recent results that include all aspects of non-verbal communication which is why I chose to use the + sign between non-verbal and communication. When using the web I used google's search engine and typed in (communication)AND(body language) because I liked the results that I got when using it before. I then selected a .org webstie due to there being more trustworthy material on .org websties. These are the ways I evaluated and revised each search, including how I adapted to each different tool I used and solved problems with too many results being returned back to me. Cited sources are as follows:

from the catalog- Philippot, P., Feldman, R. S., & Coats, E. J. (2003). Nonverbal behavior in clinical settings. Electronic resource, 12(3), 324. Retrieved from http://site.ebrary.com/lib/csueastbay/Doc?id=10084844. from ProQuest- Carolyn Y. Johnson (2008, August 18). The winners' body language - it's biological. Boston Globe,p. A.11. Retrieved November 25, 2008, from ProQuest Newsstand database. (Document ID: 1533964461). from Academic Search Premier- Goman, C. (2008, August). Watch Your Language. T+D, 62(8), 94-95. Retrieved November 25, 2008, from Academic Search Premier database. from sociological abstracts- Muhammad, K. (2007). Non-verbal communication. NUML Research Magazine, 2, 51-64. Retrieved from http://csaweb101v.csa.com/ids70/view_record.php?id=5&recnum=11&log=from_res&SID=rk3l6dblnuflq5pcte30pk30e6&mark_id=search%3A5%3A30%2C10%2C20. from the web- Messina, J. J., & Messina, C. M. (1999-2007). Nonverbals. Retrieved from Coping.org website:http://www.coping.org/dialogue/nonverbal.htm Two complex research questions that I came up with are how does non-verbal communication affect how people react to others, and how much of our comunication with others consists of non-verbal communication. Two other databases that I would use to search for more information would be britannica online and google scholar.

Assignment Two: Unit Four

My starting research question was how should the United States reform the health care issue? I first started out using google and searched free health care AND private health care. I then scrolled down the list of results and found a title that seemed to relate to my research question, which was found on http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3627. Then I looked for the copyright date which was in 2008. I decided to use the boolean search term AND in my web search. The website that I decided to use was decided on my part because first off the title in the results page on google seemed to be related to my research question and the url link was of a .org website which for my research question tend to hold more vauluable information on the sites, as well as in this case where my research question is related to the health care systems. .org websites also tend to contain information that is more trustworthy than information found on a .com website. The information on the site also comes from the Cato Institute, which is made up of public policy research conducted by various scholars. However the Cato Institute is libertarian which could be a bad thing is some aspects as being to extremist in policy suggestions, but in this case I think it could be a good thing due to free health care against private health care a big issue in America's health care reform debates. the information found on the site helped me to reform my research question to what are the differences between single-payer and socialistic health care systems. When searching my topic using the library catalog I began my search with (United States)AND(health care reform) the search was limited to available items, the location was under internet resources, the material type was under computer media, and the language was english. I first looked at a source titled getting better value in health care, then I looked at similar items and selected health care reform-United States where I then selected Charting a Course for Health Care Reform which was dated as March 14, 2007. The material was from a session of congress so I selected it, because it was more than likely that it would contain trustworthy material and had a title relating directly to my research question. When looking at the material I found that one in six Americans do not have access to health care. The hearing was also centered on gaining the goal of universal health care coverage. Controling ridiculous amounts of money being spent on health care was another topic of the hearing. Also free health care run by the government did not seem to be a road that should be taken for Americans due to provate decisions being the most reliable ones that would get Americans their rightful health care needs met. After my research I developed two refined research questions which are what is the role private health care plays in America, and how doesn't givernment run health care systems meet patients needs? The research statement that I came up with is, Health care is a necessisty for all people present in the world and reform is a necessity if we are to gain adequate improvements in our livings.

Assignment One: Unit Four

The stories featured in the SF Gate, LA Times, Fox News, and PBS News consist of plans that Obama our country's president elect has for when he officially takes office, and stories about local news. Most of the news stories tend to be centered around local news stories except for the PBS News which is centered more on national and international news coverage. All of the news sites have overlapping news coverage on Obama's plan on dealing with our country's economic crisis, who he has named as his economic advisers are, and who his busget boss is. There are also overlapping stories on Zimbabwe refusing entry into their country, and on Hugo Chavez' election situation, as well as coverage on the Tibet and China crisis with Tibet not gaining enough autonomy. There are differences in smaller stories from site to site in what they decide to cover especially in the case of local news stories due to it being local to that city and or county. Most differences in the news stories covered on each site I believe occur from there being different journalists writing and interpereting the stories covered in their own way. Not everybody will write exactly what other people will write and not everybody covers stories in the same manner. Separating fact from opinion can be difficult at times depending on how the message is relayed in the story, but facts would be things or statements that are well known and have been proven to be true, where opinions are beliefs or statements made by individuals based on presumptions and have not been proven to be true. For example if apples can be red, green, or yellow can be proven so it's a fact not an opinion. If we follow monetary policy and get rid of fiscal policy the economy would be in a better position is an opinion, because it hasn't been proven. The writers of the news stories form their articles with spoken statements from individuals directly involved in the stories being covered and generally use statistics about certain stories given by specialists directly involved in the stories being covered and then generally form their opinion in towards the conclusion of the article being written. Using the statistical facts a majority of the time along with spoken statements given from those directly involved in the stories being covered help to gain the reader's beliefe in what's being conveyed to them within the news story, it is then that the writers persuade the readers to believe their opinions given towards the conclusions of the news stories. When reading stories covered in the news the reader should always be somewhat biast about what the writer is conveying in his story in the sense that you always want to question everything being discussed in the story. This allows the reader to take in the facts being presented, information being presented, and the opinions being presented in the story so the reader can formulate their own information about the story and their own opinion so they can gain their own knowledge on the situation being discussed in the news story.

Assignment One: Unit Six

Academic integrity allows assignments to be comprised of actual work from the student instead of a cluster of inaccurately cited information provided by other sources. Academic integrity allows for students to acquire the ability of citing information and sources correctly, where they're able to avoid being accused of plagiarism, causing them to not be able to be expelled, suspended, or put on academic probation. Avoiding plagiarism is the most important part of academic integrity, because plagiarism consists of academic dishonesty. Students that have academic integrity will tend to excel in school and avoid having trouble with future papers and research papers especially. In this first quarter of college I have been working on citing sources of information implemented in papers of mine to avoid being accused of plagiarism which is the biggest concern of mine when writing papers. I also try my best to summarize information acquired from other sources with my own words, and if I'm not able to do so I cite the information properly rather than taking the risk and involving myself in academic dishonesty. I will usually cite my information directly after the source, but will also cite information in the middle of the source or occasionally at the beginning of the source being cited. The Open Access system allows for people to acquire information from texts and having the opportunity to copy, share, distribute, print, and link among others without copyright infringement for free. All that is really needed is proper citation and acknowledgment of the author responsible for writing the text. Creative Commons allows for people to build upon others' work with allowance given to authors to choose what they choose to fully copyright or have all rights reserved and those that they wish to waive for other users or some rights reserved. Creative Commons tries to avoid problems with copyright laws that are created for the sharing of information. The fair use doctrine allows limited use of copyrighted material without having to acquire permission from the rights holder. I believe that our privacy is challenged in a big way with the passing of the Patriot Act where the government can monitor conversations held between two parties if suspicious of your involvement with being a threat to the government, as well as being able to acquire your library records if found suspicious of activities that threaten the United States government. Also privacy is threatened where your personal items that you chose to throw away in the garbage once put out on the street becomes available to the public and can be used by police officials to gain a search warrant if wanted to search through the belongings within your home. I believe that privacy can only be protected with appeals to court systems and to get policies overturned starting with the Patriot Act. Nothing in this country has ever been changed without involving the court systems. So the court systems is where we need to start first and then go from there to help ensure the protection of our privacy in this country. I wasn't very surprised by the list of challenged books, because people are always going to hold ridiculous points of view and beliefs regarding everything in life especially in literature. It seems to me that most ridiculous beliefs held by people tend to stem from religious ideals where most literature that was challenged tended to hold some form of sexually explicit material and homosexual material. Not to mention the individual's challenging the literature beliefs about sexual material and homosexual material try to convey it as being not appropriate for children and could potentially corrupt children's minds, but is really just the challenger's feelings of uncomfortableness and insecurity with the subject matter being discussed within the text of the literature. My overall ideas about information ethics haven't changed much except for my ideas about Open Access and Creative Commons uses, which I believe to be a very good idea and should be incorporated into more aspects of literature and sources of information, making the information more readily available to those in search of the information.

Assignment Two: Unit Five

for my research topic I was trying to find articles discussing how macroeconomics and microeconomics are related overall, but more so within the United States of America. For my first search I conducted it in Econlit and typed in macroeconomics, the word and is already provided in the search engine so I then typed in microeconomics in the below search bar with both being in searched in SU Subjects. The search mode being boolean/phrase, also searched within the full text of the articles. The publication type being journal articles, published between January 1990 and November 2008. My second search was conducted in Business source Premier using the same wroding and under SU subjects. Boolean/phrase was selected in search modes with searching within the full text of the articles. Articles between January of 1990 and November of 2008 was selected, publication type as academic journal, document type as article, and with articles with images all was selected. Econlist gave back thirteen results and Business Search Premier came back with 154 results. Results from both searches were only somewhat on target. However I didn't run into any problems with my searches. In Econlist I changes the searches to all texts and swithced the time to January, 2007 to november, 2008 and publication type as all. In Business Search Premier I cahnged the search to macroeconomics* using truncation, searching in all texts, with the same search mode as boolean/phrase, publication type as all, document type as all, articles with images as PDF, and the publication date between January, 2008 to November, 2008. I got back nine reults with Econlist and sixty-three with Business Search Premier. The most appropriate title I selected with Business Search Premier was Adaptive Microfoundations for Emergent Macroeconomics, with the citation being: Gaffeo, Edoardo, et al. "Adaptive Microfoundations for Emergent Macroeconomics." Eastern Economic Journal 34.4 (Fall2008 2008): 441-463. Business Source Premier. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 8 Nov. 2008 . The most appropriate title selected with Econlist is titled Simulating the Dynamic Macroeconomic and Microeconomic Effects of the FairTax, with the citation being: Jokisch, Sabine, and Laurence J. Kotlikoff.. "Simulating the Dynamic Macroeconomic and Microeconomic Effects of the FairTax." National Tax Journal 60.2 (June 2007): 225-252. EconLit. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 8 Nov. 2008 . The content discussed in the Business Search Premier article is about basing microfoundations to Macroeconomic theory to individual behavior. In the Econlist article the topic of discussion is about how the FairTax might provide different options to bleek looking economic future and the major improvements it could provide for the majority of Americans. Two new questions that I developed are what are ways macroeconomics and microeconomics used together that could improve the U.S. economy, and what influence do macroeconomics and microeconomics hold on the U.S. economy?