You can use the rhetorical triangle to evaluate information.
Look at the competence and expertise of the author in the area they are writing.
Consider who the information is written for and whether you fit into that group.
Use the context of where the information is found as well as the context within which it was written.
| Consider the... | Scholarly Publications are... | Trade Publications are... | Popular Publications are... |
|---|---|---|---|
| Length of Articles |
Lengthy, often more than 10 pages, and include areas such as abstracts, methods, results, and discussions. |
Short, fewer than 10 pages, and often lacking structural subsections. | Short, fewer than 10 pages, and lack structural subsections. |
| Audience | Written for academics or professionals with advanced language. | Written for people in specific trades, industries, or professions, as well as interested non-specialists. | Written for the general public in non-specialized language. |
| Authority & Expertise | Written by academics, specialists, or researchers in the field. | Written by industry professionals, sometimes journalists with subject expertise; author credentials are usually provided. | Written by journalists or professional writers. |
| Bibliography | Well researched and includes information about their sources in an area called References, Works Cited, or Footnotes so a reader can consult the material that the author used. | References may be provided in a brief bibliography, but are not required. | Sometimes researched, but sources are seldom included with the article. A good editor will check the writer's sources. |
| Frequency | Published monthly, quarterly, or yearly. | Published weekly or monthly. | Published daily, weekly, or monthly. |
| Inclusions | Not decorated with images and only have specialized advertising if any is included. They will also include reviews of the literature, charts, data, and tables along with descriptions of how their research was conducted. | Articles may include decorative photographs and graphic layouts similar to popular publications. They may include advertisements for products, but they will typically be relevant to that field or industry. | Print versions may be full of decorative photographs, illustrations, and text. They also include a lot of product advertisements. |
| Subjects | Confined to a single, specific aspect of a subject area such as music theory, European political science, film studies, language development, or stem cell research. | Confined to a particular field or industry with the intent to provide practical information about current news, trends, and products. | Often inclusive of many subjects, such as in Time, People, and Newsweek, or focused on a single subject with the intention of entertaining such as in Wired or Sports Illustrated. |
| Vocabulary | Written with technical or specialized vocabulary unique to a subject area. | Written with specialized terminology or jargon of the field, but not as technical as a scholarly publication. | Written in conventional or conversational language, appropriate for most readers |
| Publication Process | Sent to experts in the subject who review the article to evaluate credibility and accuracy before being published. This process is known as "peer-review". | Articles are evaluated by editorial staff who may be subject experts, but articles are not peer-reviewed. | Sent to an editor who may know nothing of the topic. The editor might use a fact-checker, who also may not be familiar with the topic, to verify some information. |
You have to find an article on climate change and your professor expects you to use college worthy sources. Google is not an option. Now what? Well, let's take a look at the HACC database EBSCOhost. To get started, type your search term climate change in the search box. Press enter or click search to see your results. Your search gives you thousands of results, but who has time to look at all of those articles? If you look to the left, you'll find several options for narrowing your search that will improve the likelihood you'll find an article you can use. Under the heading "limit to," click on FULL TEXT. This reduces your results list by removing any results that don't include the complete text of the article. Now let's think about date range. For some topics and assignments, we may want to look at older articles for historical information. However, for this assignment and topic, we want more up-to-date information. Let's stick to articles that have been published in the past 10 years. There are two ways you can do this. One is to click in the box to the left of the words publication date and type in the oldest year your professor will accept. The second is to click and drag the left slide bar to the right until you see the year you want in the left box. Now that you've set the date range according to your needs, you'll see the heading source types depending on the requirements of your assignment you can choose articles from the source required. For example, if your professor wants only scholarly sources, then you can select academic journals and the results list will show only articles from scholarly sources. Great, now you've narrowed your results list. It's time to take a look at what you have. You'll start by reading each title to determine if the article has the information you're looking for. When you find an article that looks interesting and is about your topic, you'll want to read the abstract. The abstract can be viewed by placing your mouse over the magnifying glass to the right of the title. This brief summary of the article will let you know if the material in the article is useful to you. Let's say you've read the abstract and the article is definitely something you need. Click on the title of the article to open the full record. Review the article information and make sure you're meeting the requirements of the assignment. From this screen, you can email your article and even get help with the citation. When you click on the citation icon, a pop up window with several different citation styles will appear. Scroll down inside this window to locate the style you need for your assignment. You can copy and paste what you need into a Word document. However, remember that these citations could have errors. So make sure you double check for accuracy. In order to access the full-text of this article, look to the left side of the screen. Under the heading detailed record, you may see more than one option. In this example, we chose PDF full text because that option will show us the most complete version as it appeared in print including all of the images, charts, and graphs. In order to download or print your article, use the icons inside the PDF window. If you would like more information on how to effectively search in the HACC databases, check out our other videos or contact a librarian for help.
In this video, we will explore the advanced search strategies available in the EBSCOhost database. We will be using techniques explained in a previous video about the basic search strategies. If you haven’t watched that video or feel confused in the first few minutes of this video, follow the link to watch part one. Your professor expects you to use 5 scholarly sources from the library databases, all published within the past 5 years. To get started, type your search term, “climate change” (in quotes) in the search box. Press enter or click search to see your results. These limiters usually reduce your results quite a bit; however, you may want to refine your search terms to find articles that are more on target with your topic. There are several ways to experiment with your search terms. One of the simplest is to do what we did at the beginning of this search and put your search terms in quotes. This tells the database you are looking for these words together. Another way to make your search results even more relevant, is to investigate the vocabulary the database uses to tag your topic. This particular topic has gone through some name changes over the years, so you may hear people refer to it as “global warming” or “climatic changes.” In order to determine the vocabulary the database uses, expand the section labeled “Subject:Major Heading”. As you can see here, there are several terms listed that can be used to explore your topic further. You can click on the “Show More” link to expand this section. The pop up window offers you an idea of the vocabulary this database uses, and helps you brainstorm ways in which you can narrow your search. For example, if we select “Public Health,” the search will be narrowed to articles focusing on the correlation between climate change and public health. Now you need to look at the articles in your results list. Remember the preview tool from our Basic Search Video? Reading the title and abstract will help you decide if you want to read the whole article. Does this article contain the information you need? If so, click on the title. This opens a screen that gives additional information about the article, including subject tags that you can use for additional searches. This is the best time to get your citation information. However, don’t assume citation generators are completely accurate. Make sure to check the citations using the HACC Citing Sources LibGuide. You may also want to email, save, or print your article as you gather your research to keep yourself organized. Finally, You’ll see some of the article records have red Find It! buttons. The Find It button tells you the full text of the article is not available in EBSCO, but may be found in a different HACC database, like ProQuest, ScienceDirect, or elsewhere. So make sure to check out the Find It buttons on those articles that meet your needs. If you would like more information on how to effectively search, check out our other videos or ask a librarian for help.
