Week 5

With the fifth week of Library Studies complete, I can say that I learned tons of valuable information that will help me throughout my college and life career. Before this class, I thought research would be difficult and hard to find information. I would probably be using Google for the rest of my life and trusting everything I found if it was what I needed. I never knew that there were such valuable resources out there that would give me accurate, and reliable information. In this class, I can now navigate the Penn State Libraries website efficiently. LionSearch is useful if you need to find anything on your specific topic. You can even narrow your search from journal articles to book reviews by checking boxes on the side of the screen. If you need to find a book in the Penn State library, you can just type in the title in LionSearch or you can search the CAT. On the CAT, you can navigate to your book easily by clicking on the compass button. If you don't want to do that, you can click the "I want it" button and a librarian will pull the book for you. You can also write down the call number and a librarian will help you find it. Either way you want to do it, a book will be found for you! The research guides section on the website is helpful as well. Guides can be found for any major and are full of information you are looking for. Databases can help you search for what you need, too. There are specific databases for each subject. This is a good way to find what you need fast instead of searching Google or a database with a wide range of subjects. We also talked about reliable sources a lot in LST. Scholarly articles can almost 100% of the time be trusted because they are made by universities and are edited and looked over by officials. Books with long, boring titles are usually more trusted than colorful books with simple facts, and websites like Twitter are beneficial too if they have a check mark of "official account" approval. One more important topic in this class involved copyright. It is extremely important to cite  and give credit to everything, even pictures. I always thought that pictures I found on Google were safe, but now I realize I need to get permission or cite them. Citing is now easy because this class showed me ways I can do it!

Overall, I am very glad I took this class! I am much more confident with researching and will have little to no trouble doing so in the future. I know that the librarians are always here to help in any way and I'm very thankful for that. I wish I took this class before English 015 in the summer because it would have came in handy, though I'm glad I have the knowledge for my other classes. Now, my eyes are open to new material, and new sources of research to find what I need to. Amanda and Bonnie were awesome instructors and I appreciate their time and effort they put into this class. I felt comfortable and welcome everyday. I hope everyone has a good rest of the year and luck in researching! (: Thank you Bonnie and Amanda!

Week 4

This past week was interesting to me because we talked about websites that I use almost everyday. We discussed "new" media like Twitter and Youtube. On Youtube, Amanda showed us what reliable videos look like. For example, when looking up "Libya Embassy Attack" she told us to pick a video. We then had to explain why we thought it was reliable or not. The video made by the Wall Street Journal was definitely reliable because there was evidence that the Youtube page was legitimate. "The Wall Street Journal" headed the Youtube page and the main page was linked with the actual "Wall Street Journal" website. However, a video on the same topic but involving a man named "Mr. Lawless" was not trustful because it was made by a random man in a paper mask. Anyone can post videos on Youtube but it is important to look for the reliable ones, sometimes made by major news producers. On Twitter, we learned that reliable sources have blue check marks next to their name. The Obama twitter page was an example of a trustworthy source. Tweets from that page can be screenshotted for reference to cite especially because any tweet can disappear at any moment. Opposing Viewpoints was another source showed to us that displayed current events. Towards the end of class, Amanda and Bonnie took us to the Media Commons. I am glad to know about it now because I never knew that that part of the library existed. It seems so simple to make a video for a class project. I know that place will come in handy.
On Thursday, the class had a group discussion. We talked about things that many don't know are copyrighted. The popular "Happy Birthday" song is copyrighted and is technically not supposed to be sung in public. Who would've known? We also talked about many other things like the article we read for class. Some classmates were torn on the subject that we use Google and other technology as a memory source. I think we do. Technology is helpful and other information is just too much for the human brain to handle. Google helps us recall almost irrelevant information that doesn't need to be stored in the human mind until we want to know it.
Overall, this weekend was helpful, useful, and informational. I learned things that I already thought I knew or didn't know.

Week 3

Week 3 was filled with tons of valuable information that I need to know in my college career. On Tuesday, Amanda taught us about scholarly articles. First, she showed us two videos that clarified and summarized what we learned the week before. She persuaded to broaden that topic in class that day. She went on to say that scholarly articles should be used as much as possible when getting research for class. They are usually published by a university and are peer reviewed. Consequently, information is very correct, researched, and precise. Amanda even showed us an example of a book that would be scholarly. She presented us with two books that seemed very similar, both about the science of yoga. One book was colorful and had a simple title. The other one had a gray bland color with a "sophisticated" title. Even though the first book looks very appealing to the eye and easy to read, the bland or "boring" book is a much better source. It is longer and has a wide variety of topics in the table of contents where as the other only had a few sections and did not contain much.  It is key to know what source to use so information you are presenting is not false or inaccurate. On Thursday, Bonnie talked to the class about research ethics, plagiarism, and copyright. She began to tell us about patents. When showing us her thermos, she said that a patent was put on the idea of that product so that way, the idea is reserved from anyone else using it. It gives credit to the creator. Patents are kind of like trademarks. Trademarks are used on pictures or logos to acknowledge ownership. She said that a girl in a class she used to teach once tried to use a picture of a Disney character on her website. Disney found out and wanted to sue her by law! It's crazy to think that so much trouble can come from a simple picture on a website. It is crucial to contact the author for permission because those things are taken very seriously. Bonnie finished the class talking about the importance of citation. Citation is probably the most vital idea to remember in research. Anything found from a source, whether it's a book or website, needs to be cited and credited. If not, it seems that the information provided is original. It is not right to take other's ideas.  I know I would not like it if someone copied me so respect should be given in all times. Even if ideas are summarized, they need to be cited. Some good ways of citing are to use Academic Search Complete and other websites Bonnie said in class. They make citing so much easier and less of a worry. Overall, this week I learned good ways to cite information and where to get my information from.

Week 2

The second week of Library Studies was very informative and informational about online sources. On Tuesday, Bonnie and Amanda talked to us about research guides on the Penn State libraries website. I found this interesting because there are so many different research guides depending on what your topic is. For example, we looked under the topic, "Nutrition". The guide showed the librarian who made up the guide with their contact information. If you needed more help, it would be convenient to contact that librarian who is an expert in the field of your topic. The guides also give you precise databases to do more research about your topic. I love this because you don't have to look on every database until you find the right information. The newspaper sources was another thing that interested me in class because I never realized newspapers could be accessed way after the date they came out. They provide information from the day that something happened and are a great source when you need to cite exact dates. In addition, we were notified about online collections. These can be very helpful to improve a research paper which we will definitely have to do in the future.
On Thursday, the class was taught by Amanda about Wikipedia and reliable sources. In high school, teachers always told me not to use Wikipedia but I never really knew why. Supposedly, any person could go in and change information into false, inaccurate info. Amanda told us that that was true. Not only that, but she actually showed us. She took us to a Wikipedia page about vaccines, clicked on a source, and actually looked up the source. The person did not even go to a real medical school and was not a PhD. It made the information on the page not trustworthy. We were taught that a correct source to use was a scholarly journal, for example, because they are secondary resources and are available after instant news like twitter, T.V., radio, and magazines or blogs. Reference sources like encyclopedias and dictionaries are also of high quality to use. New sources are not always as reliable. Furthermore, the topic that I was most impressed about in class was that I learned that books are not always better than online sources. I always thought if information was found in a book, than it was most accurate than anything. All in all, I now know that I'm wrong and can better improve my research. I will also make sure I have reliable sources for now on!

Week 1

In my first week in Library Studies, I surprisingly learned a lot more than I thought I already knew about a library! With Amanda and Bonnie's demonstration, I discovered that there are tons of databases and useful tools online as well as books in the library to use when I'm doing research for a class or project. Amanda showed us how to utilize the Penn State libraries website to get to every resource we need. For instance, she showed us how to use the CAT, which is a catalog search engine that searches for books in tons of different Penn State libraries. I like the CAT because you can choose a location that is beneficial to you to get books from. You can even click an "I want it" button and books will be shipped to a library near you! EBSCOhost was another great database to use because you could search for a specific or broad topic, and it will bring up articles from journals or periodicals online related to it. In class, we searched "freshman weight gain" and found that there were not many results for it. Though, by broadening our search topic to something like "college weight gain", we found more articles closer or directly related to our topic. My favorite thing I learned in class this week was that I found that it was possible to find textbooks used for classes right in the Penn State library! It will be so useful to me because I don't have all the books I need for my classes and books are very expensive. The books on reserve can be accessed by asking someone at a front desk in the Pattee Library. Overall, I know now that there are many more ways to use a library to do research. I think I will have better knowledge for future classes from taking this class. Though I still wonder, what more can we learn to improve our research?