FYD 101: The Miami Project subjectId: 690882

This guide will serve as a resource to help you navigate the Miami Project for your FYD 101 course assignment. 

This section will discuss ways to search using uSearch for materials using a combination of Boolean Operators in order to generate effective results. 

Library databases and search engines, such as uSearch, are different from a search engines like Google, where you can type in a sentence such as "why is the sky blue?" and it yields results that can answer your question. uSearch and library databases differ because it doesn't allow sentence searching. You will have improved success in searching uSearch and databases by using a mix of keywords and Boolean Operators. 

To search for a phrase, type quotation marks around the phrase. You can combine both words and phrases in your search. 

 
If you do not use the exact phrase options, the system will find items that contain the individual words in the phrase, regardless of whether these words are located next to each other in the order specified.

You can exclude items that contain specific words or phrases. To do so, type NOT (in all capitals) and then type the word or phrase to exclude.
For example, to search for items with the word Celtic and exclude any of these items with the word Irish, type the following in the search box:


 
If you search for words or phrases without specifying OR or NOT, Primo assumes that you are searching for all the specified words or phrases.

You can use parentheses to group terms within a query. For example, to search for Shakespeare and either tragedy or sonnet, type the following in the search box:

You can search for items that contain at least one of the words or phrases you type in the Search box. To do so, type OR (in all capitals) between the words or phrases.

For example, to search for items with the word Irish or the word Celtic, type the following in the search box:


 
If you search for words or phrases without specifying OR or NOT, uSearch assumes that you are searching for all the specified words or phrases.

You can include the following wildcard characters in your searches:
 

? - enter a question mark to perform a single character wildcard search. For example, type wom?n to search for records that contain the strings woman, women, and so forth.
 
* - enter and asterisk to perform a multiple character wildcard search. For example, type cultur* to search for records that contain strings, such as culture, cultural, and culturally.

The system ignores wildcard characters placed at the beginning of search terms. For example, the system treats the search terms ?aying and *aying as if you had searched foraying.

When doing a search in the Everything tab, you can click on the “expand beyond UM” limiter on the left after running a search.  This link will expand your search results to materials that may be in another library.  You can then order the materials through Interlibrary Loan.
 

A database is a large collection of data organized for quick search and retrieval. At the UM Libraries, we allocate a significant portion of our budget to acquire databases for our online catalog. We house over 800 databases that include a variety of resources, such as print books, eBooks, movies, journals, magazines, newspapers, music scores, government documents, archives, special collections, and more!

You can search for specific subject areas and individual databases by using filters. There are two main types of databases you may encounter:

General Database: A general database is a good starting point for your research. For example, databases like Gale Academic OneFile cover a broad range of topics and subjects within a single platform.

Subject Database: A subject database, such as Engineering Village, is ideal for finding more specific information and resources related to a particular area of study. If your research topic is narrow, focused on a specific field, or highly technical, using subject databases can be especially beneficial.

This section focuses on the types of sources you may encounter in your research. Sources can be categorized in two different ways. "Types of Sources" may refer to:

1. Level or distance from the original source of information (primary, secondary, or tertiary)
2. Format of the information source (book, article, blog, etc.)

This section will clarify the differences. 

Scholarly Sources can refer to peer-reviewed journal articles or academic books.

A scholarly publication is one in which the content is written by experts in a particular field of study - generally for the purpose of sharing original research or analyzing others' findings. Scholarly work will thoroughly cite all source materials used and is usually subject to "peer review" before publication. This means that independent experts in the field review, or "referee" the publication to check the accuracy and validity of its claims. The primary audience for this sort of work is fellow experts and students studying the field. As a result, the content is typically much more sophisticated and advanced than articles found in general magazines or professional/trade journals.

In brief, scholarly work is:

• Written by experts for experts
• Based on original research or intellectual inquiry
• Provides citations for all sources used
• It is usually peer-reviewed before publication

Popular sources include newspapers and magazines.

These aim to inform a wide array of readers about issues of interest and are much more informal in tone and scope. Examples include general news, business, and entertainment publications such as Time Magazine, Business Week, Vanity Fair.

Special interest publications that are not specifically written for an academic audience are also considered "popular," e.g., National Geographic, Scientific American, Psychology Today.

In brief, popular sources

• Journalists or professional writers write them for a general audience.
• Written in a language that is easy to understand by the general public.
• Rarely have a bibliography; rather, they are fact-checked through the publication's editorial process.
• Don't assume prior knowledge of a subject area - for this reason, they are often very helpful to read if you don't know a lot about your subject area yet.
• May contain an argument, opinion, or analysis of an issue.

Trade or Professional sources are generally for practitioners and people working in a particular field. These are more specialized than popular publications but are not intended to be scholarly. Rather, they communicated the news and trends in that field. Research findings are not typically disseminated here, though they may report that a scholarly publication is forthcoming.

These types of publications typically contain more advertising than a scholarly journal, though they're usually targeted to the field in some way.

Articles in trade publications, in most cases, are written by practitioners in a field (nurses, teachers, social workers, etc) and use the language (and jargon) of the field.

Example:

• College and Research Library News
• Construction Today
• Bar Journal 

Primary sources provide first-hand observations or direct evidence concerning a topic under investigation. Witnesses or recorders create them at or near the time of the event. They have not been filtered through further interpretation or evaluation. 

Primary sources may include

• Original Documents: diaries, speeches, letters, interview transcripts, news footage, autobiographies, reports, census records, and data from an experiment
• Creative Works: poetry, plays, novels, music scores, films, paintings
• Objects: clothing, buildings, tools, furniture

Secondary sources are works that analyze, assess, or interpret a historical event, era, or phenomenon.  They may use primary sources to write a review, critique, interpretation, or other work, often well after the event.

Secondary sources may include

• journal articles, editorial articles, literary criticism, book reviews, biographies, textbooks

Tertiary Sources are those used to identify and locate primary and secondary sources.

Tertiary sources may include

• Reference Works: encyclopedias, abstracts
• Lists or Collections: bibliographies, finding aids
• Search Tools: library database or catalog, indexes

The SIFT method was created by Mike Caulfield. All SIFT information on this page is adapted from his materials with a CC BY 4.0 license. The SIFT Method is a four-step technique that can help to evaluate the credibility of online information. 

The first step is to stop. When you encounter a webpage, an image, a social media post, etc., you first STOP. Ask yourself whether you know the website, source of the image or information, and what is the credibility of both the claim and the source. If you do not have that information, you can use the following moves to understand what it is you are looking at. 

Pro tip: Do not share or read media until you know what it is. 

The third step is finding better coverage. If you found that the source's credibility is questionable, the quality is low, or investigating the source did not answer your questions, you may need to find better coverage. This move can mean searching elsewhere to assess the source's reliability or getting accurate information about the source or claim.

Ways that you can find better coverage are by:

• Reverse image searching
• Use fact-checking websites
  • Snopes
  • FactCheck.org
  • Politifact
  • New York Times Fact Checks
• Search on Google or another search engine to see what coverage is available on that same topic

The next step would be to investigate the source. This step means that before you begin reading an article, website, or post, you want to know what you are going to read. 

Say, for instance, you are about to read an article on the benefits of a vegan diet by a Save the Animals non-profit organization, you should be aware of that source. The same thing applies to a news article on inflation in the US economy, written by a Pulitzer Prize-winning economist and Harvard professor; you should know who the author is before you read the source.

Ways to investigate the source can look like:

• Use lateral reading. Go beyond the 'About Us' page and find what other trusted sources are saying about that source. You can search on Google or go Wikipedia to research the source. 
• Hovering to learn more about who is sharing the information, especially on social media platforms. 

The next step would be to trace claims, quotes, and media back to their sources. Online, much of the media we encounter is stripped of context. It could be for a variety of reasons: misleading reporting, edited sound and video, inaccurate captions or headlines, etc. As a result, these stories, videos, or claims can go through a game of telephone, and the more they go viral or circulate online, the more they can be distorted from their source or reporting. This is when you would investigate further and trace the media back to the source to find the original context. 

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National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation's historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America's historic and archeological resources.