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+<markdown>
+# Evaluating and Managing Search and Retrieval
+Hi Class, welcome to the week where we begin to discuss how to evaluate and
+manage search and retrieval.
+## Readings
+This week we have one reading: Chapters 11 and 12 from our book by Cheryl Knott.
+In addition to this lecture, I'll post a short demonstration video about how to
+apply some of what we've learned here.
+## Introduction
+As we wrap up Module 1, let's quickly review the main topics we've covered:
+- database terminology
+- multiple available databases and types of databases
+  - paywalled databases
+    - academic search complete (EBSCOhost)
+    - ProQuest
+  - free to use databases
+    - Google Scholar, etc.
+- e-journal titles, searching
+- strategic information seeking
+- systematic browsing
+- browsing strategies
+  - subject browsing
+  - controlled vocabulary
+  - author browsing
+  - citation browsing
+  - combination browsing
+  - Boolean logic
+In our final week for Module 1, we're going to quickly follow up on how to
+review how to evaluate and manage search results via individual databases.
+We'll go a littler further than what we did in an earlier forum, where we
+looked at creating lists in databases and such, and I'll refer to two databases
+as examples, but these tools are available on many databases. So, if you find
+that you use one of these databases a lot, like one of the databases that
+you've highlighted and have written about already, then create an account and
+take advantage of what they have or it has to offer.
+## Review data about each source
+Let's say I'm interested in articles about the Lincoln and Douglas debates or
+about the Lincoln and Douglas style of debating, and I do a search for that
+term:
+<code>lincoln douglas debate</code>
+When I retrieve results, not all of the results will be relevant. To identify
+potential relevant results, without reading all of the original documents,
+which would be a waste of time, I can use the information on the results page
+to help decide what may be useful. Things I want to look at, as we've already
+discussed in previous weeks, include:
+- the title: titles often contain important information that signify what a
+  paper or document is about, and so I want to read the title
+- page length: is the page length reported? Is it long? Is it too short?
+- recency: we have to be careful with recency. All research depends on the
+  research before it. Some of today's research explicitly builds on previous
+  work. In those cases, the previous research is useful, even if it's a bit
+  outdated. But in other cases, research refutes previous research---shows that
+  it was wrong. In those cases, we might just want to select the most recent.
+- the abstract: The abstract is designed to summarize information about an
+  original source and is incredibly useful because it saves us time. There are
+  different kinds of abstracts, but the most helpful are ones that not only
+  tell us what a piece is about, but also tell us something about the methods,
+  findings, and conclusions.
+- the descriptors/subject terms/thesauri: We've already reviewed these. Again,
+  not only are they helpful in query formation, but they should also signal to
+  us what a piece is about, and are thus useful in selecting works to save.
+## Create accounts to manage sources
+Most major database platforms provide a way to create an account. This is super
+helpful if we want to use these platforms for managing search results. In the
+next module, we'll begin looking at other products that help us to this,
+products that are database neutral, but we may still want to use what the
+database platform has to offer for some tasks.
+In this slide, I'm in EBSCOHost's *Academic Search Complete*. I've already
+created an account and have clicked on the Folder link/icon at the top right of
+the page. Here, on the left, you can see a list of the default folders.
+## Database folders
+Let's go back to my search results. After reviewing the title, subject terms,
+abstract, and so forth for this first item in my results, I've decided that I
+want to save and read it later because I think it'll be useful for the paper
+I'm writing. To save it, I click on the folder icon just to the right of the
+title, and then click on the My Folder icon to save it there. You can see there
+there's a second item on this list that's titled *Wikipedia articles*. This is
+a folder that I've already created and where I've saved articles that are on
+that topic.
+## Add and review
+And that's it. Once I've saved it to my folder, I visit that folder to see what
+I've saved, and then go back to my search results and continue adding and
+reviewing. If I create multiple folders, I can copy or move these bibliographic
+records to new ones. I keep iterating through this process until I've decided
+that I'm done.
+## Export citations
+We'll cover this a bit more next week, but it's helpful to know that I can
+export the bibliographic information as citations. Here you have a list of some
+of the standard file formats. We'll come back to this next week, but I
+want you to see that it's there.
+## Review previous queries
+Once I've iterated through the results based on my initial query, I can re-run
+new queries, perhaps based on some subject terms I've found, and then revisit
+my search history. I can review my search history, edit any queries there I've
+found, and merge them with other queries using Boolean logic.
+## Share results
+There are a number of ways you can share the results of a search or of
+individual records. In *EBSCOHost*, if you click on the Share link, you'll have
+options to share all the results of the search, create an email alert, or
+create an RSS feed.
+The permalink function, shown in this image, is meant to provide you with a URL
+that will always return these results. Depending on the database, if the
+database offers this, I've found that this can be hit or miss. That is,
+sometimes it doesn't work.
+E-mail alerts are great. The system will save your search and re-run it
+periodically. Whenever new results are found that match your query, you'll
+receive an email about it. This is useful, especially, for projects that you
+know about in advance. E.g., say you know at the beginning of the semester that
+you'll have to write about *lincoln douglas debates* later on in the semester.
+If you set up the query at the beginning of the semester, a big part of your
+work will be done (that is, searching) by the time you have to begin reading
+and writing the paper. In short, let computers do as much of the work for you
+as possible. Save yourself some time.
+## Other databases
+Lots of other databases offer these and similar functionalities. In an earlier
+forum, I showed how you can do similar things in *ProQuest*, *Web of Science*,
+and *Google Scholar*. That is, I showed how we can save search results and
+create create alerts for specific queries, just like *EBSCOHost* does.
+If you have a big project, it might be useful to create alerts across a few
+databases. That way you'll have your bases covered.
+## Conclusion
+In conclusion:
+- Review all article/source information when looking at search results
+- Manage search results within databases. Many databases help with this.
+- Next week we'll begin reviewing bibliographic reference software.
+Stay tuned for an additional video to show some of this in action.
+</markdown>

C. Sean Burns: Notebook

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