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.