SEO is often thought of as a purely commercial endeavor: companies and other for-profit websites use keywords strategically, make use of headings and meta tags, and build inbound links in order to increase search engine positions and generate more revenue. But in the world of academia, scholars are also recognizing a need to implement some […]
How to Evaluate Podcasts: Tips for Finding the Best Podcasts
Podcasts, defined as a type of digital media with an episodic series of files subscribed to and downloaded through web syndication, are a great way to consume information. Since they are most commonly listened to on portable media players, you can keep up with the news or learn a new subject during your daily commute […]
How Four Databases Index Articles (Part 2)
This is the second part of an article about database indexing practices. View part one Finally, the ERIC database serves a very different user group, so it features a fundamentally different indexing scheme. ERIC is the largest database of educational literature, so it focuses on issues in education research and policy instead of library and […]
iPad—What is it Good for? (And Can It Replace Your Laptop?)
The iPad and other tablet computers aren’t laptops and they aren’t smartphones, so many people are wondering why they’d ever need a new device that sits awkwardly in the middle. You can’t put it in your pocket but it doesn’t have the full capabilities of a “real” computer. But Apple sold over 15 million iPads […]
An Investigation into the Indexing Practices of Four Databases: Part One
After reading a paper by Gloria Leckie titled “Desperately Seeking Citations,” I assigned it three keyword terms I thought were representative of the subject matter. These terms were “information seeking behavior-undergraduates,” “scholarly research” and “academic libraries-role.” [1] After comparing these to four databases, LISTA, LISA, Library Lit and ERIC, results showed five very different systems […]
Differences Between Library Catalogs and Amazon.com
Introduction: Users may begin their search for information on a topic with a known item, but be interested in expanding their search to locate related material. In a physical collection, they can do this by locating an item on the shelf and then browsing the titles in proximity to that item to look for other […]