Organized Searching

Basic Searching

By Ismael K. Isikel 17/02/2015

Matheson Library

Papua New Guinea University of Technology

This search guide is for the students of the Papua New Guinea University of Technology in Papua New Guinea. It is intended for the students to maximize their success in searching and retrieval of information.

Basic Approach to Online Searching for Information

You can search by Author, Title, and Subject if you know any of these or by guess work. You simply type in any of theses on the search prompt slot in your laptop or mobile and you will receive a search result that you go through and select those items that are suitable for your purpose.

Before Searching

Before starting your online search you break your topic down into terms or phrases so you can use these to search for information. This is known as analyzing the topic. For example, your instructor gives your class this topic "Social Impact of Experimental Seabed Mining in Papua New Guinea" to write an essay on. You break this topic down into words or phrases.

Example

Topic: "Social Impact of Experimental Seabed Mining in Papua New Guinea"

Words and Phrases: Social impact, Mining, Seabed, Seabed Mining, Experimental Seabed Mining, Papua New Guinea.

The words and phrases are taken directly from your topic. It does not mean that these are the only words and phrases. There are others that you may recall from previous readings and discussions in the community including the social media. Experimental seabed mining is a topic that is currently being discussed in the media and other sources and terms such as Nautilus, Solwara 1, Bismarck Archipelago, and names of countries involved in the subject should come to mind. Add these to your Words and Phrases and your list may look like the one here.

Words and Phrases: Social impact, Mining, Seabed, Seabed Mining, Experimental Seabed Mining, Papua New Guinea,,Nautilus, Solwara 1, Bismarck Archipelago.

Searching

After you have broken down your topic into words and phrases you may then proceed to search using each word one at a time or string them together using the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT. Advanced Search uses the Boolean operators. In an OPAC you may not be required to actually write out the search phrase using the Boolean operators because there is a prompt slot available that only requires you to fill in the terms.

When i typed in Experimental seabed mining, for example, doing a Google search it came up with about 254,0000 results in 0.38 seconds. The first item that appeared on the list is this:

Scholarly articles for Experimental seabed mining

… impacts of deep seabed mining on abyssal benthic … - ‎Trueblood - Cited by 23 … and its implications on deep seabed mining - ‎Sharma - Cited by 33 … of environmental impacts of deep seabed mining - ‎L. Morgan, Nii Allotey … - Cited by 22

Note the phrase "impacts of deep seabed mining" in the first item above. That is one phrase i did not think about to include in my search words. Therefore, each time you get a search result read carefully for other terms that you may use if the search result does not give you any relevant items to read for your paper. However, the good thing about search engines is that they retrieve other items with related terms to your search word.

Social Media & Academia

Searching Using an OPAC

Searching an Online Library Catalogue

By Ismael K. Isikel 13/02/2015
Matheson Library
Papua New Guinea University of Technology


Students in academic institutions need to have the skills and knowledge of searching and retrieval of information through online catalogues in order to be successful in learning. The online library catalogue is now used in a number of universities in Papua New Guinea. They are also commonly known as Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) and are usually found in library systems.

Search Options

There are four options of searching: 1. Quick  Search; 2. Advance Search; 3. Visual Search; and 4. Searching from Search Results. Each of these are explained next.

1. Quick  Search

Quick Search allows you to use one search term or phrase at one time. Type in the search term (author, title, or subject) in the prompt slot and right click on the mouse or press <Enter>. A result screen will appear showing the result of your search. The advantage with quick search is it is fast but the result may be minimum.

2. Advance Search

Advance Search allows the user to use more than one search term at one time. There are three prompt slots and requires the searcher to use the Boolean Operators AND, OR and NOT to string together multiple search terms.The procedure is you type a term in each prompt slot and specify the range of search by using whichever is appropriate of AND, OR, and NOT. Right click on the mouse or press <Enter> and a result screen will appear showing the result of your search.

3. Visual Search

Visual Search employs graphics (icons)  indicating subjects that are provided. The procedure is you select Go to Visual Home, select the appropriate icon, left click and it will give another set of icons and subjects which are: 1. Brows the Library; 2.Reading Programs; 3. Animals; 4. Holidays; 5. People, 6. Science, 7. Sports, 8. Stories, 9. Places, 10. Word Processor. Do a left click on the appropriate icon and a further set of icons with subjects will appear. Left click on the icon of your choice and a set of titles will appear.

4. Searching from Search Results

You can do a Search from Search Result by highlighting a term or phrase. A green light will appear on Select Search on a menu on the right of the screen. Left click on  Select Search and a result screen will appear showing further titles related to your highlighted term.

Sorting Search Results

There are 21 different ways to sort a search result. It simply means that the list of titles that appear on the screen can be rearranged in 21 different ways for convenience.These 21 different ways are actually based on the items in a library catalogue card. The twenty-one different ways are:

Title Words
Author Words
Subject Words
Notes Words
Title Index
Author Index
Subject Index
Publisher
Series
Bar Code Number
Call Number
ISBN
LCCN
Location
Format
Fund
Date of Publication
Date Acquired
Full Subjects
Reading Program
Lexile

When your search result appear the menu on the right side of the screen changes from Search, Author, Title, Subject, Reading Level to Previous, Next, Go to, A to Z Sort. Click on A to Z Sort and the above 21 options of sorting will appear. Choose whichever option you want and click on it. For example, if you choose Title Words the catalogue will rearrange the list alphabetically. It usually takes less than a minute for the catalogue to sort. This is particularly helpful when compiling your bibliography or Reference list at the end of your paper.

Web Links

One other feature of the online catalogue is Web Links. This allows you to connect to the internet via a link in a book. This may be helpful if you need further information that is not available locally.

Caution: This guide is based on  a library system known as Athena and therefore, there may be variations between this OPAC guide and other OPACs in other library systems. Variation may appear in terminology or navigation.

Web 2 and Cloud Computing

This post is a general commentary on Web 2 and Cloud Computing based on personal general observation.

The worldwide web or simply the web may now be categorized into a series of stages of expansions of web applications beginning with web 1  to web 2  and on to cloud computing. These series of expansions indicate stages of development of applications which allow the internet users more flexibility, and of course opportunities, to participate on the web using a wide array of applications linked together by a series of interconnected servers around the world. It allows the user to store and exchange data or information in the computer hard drive as well as on storage devices on the cloud. That is why it is now referred to as cloud computing. 

Now one does not have to depend entirely on carrying a flash drive or other external storage devices. You may use these external storage devices to store personal documents that you do no want to share with others via cloud storage devices.

Web 2 applications allow the academic the opportunity to share and exchange ideas with colleagues from the same institutions and others around the world. Blogs, Google Drive and Dropbox are some of the applications that a teacher can use to share and exchange ideas with colleagues.

The Paperless Challenge

Google Classroom provides  yet another option to avoid such student ques.


Students waiting in line to print their assignments at the Matheson Library, Papua New Guinea University of Technology.

The ques at the Library's photocopy and printing service prompted this post. We can help students save on the cost of printing assignments by using Web 2 applications for electronic submissions and marking of assignments.

Other universities are doing this and  PNG University of Technology can follow suit. In an earlier post (Blogging for Teaching & Learning)  i suggested lecturers creating and using blogs and My Drive for teaching and learning activities and of course quick interaction with students.

In the process of writing this post i attended a presentation on Cloud Computing by Mr Douglass Kala at our IT Department today, 15.9.2014. Here i learnt of a newly released Google application known as classroom ( http://classroom.google.com/) that provides another option for teaching and learning. Classroom was  designed specially for learning and teaching between teachers and students.

Academic Leadership & Social Media

Leading in 140 Characters or Less (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE.edu This article captures the experience of an American university president, Santa J. Ono PhD, (or in our case Vice Chancellor) in the use of the social media as an academic leader. Santa J. Ono is the President of the University of Cincinnati.

Interestingly, Dr Santa makes reference to a study  (Cooper, "10 Surprising Social Media Statistics.")  that shows
"the fastest-growing cohort on both Facebook and Google+ is people ages 45 to 54; the fastest on Twitter is ages 55 to 64". Many of us here at the PNG University of Technology most likely fall within these age groups and some of us have Facebook and Twitter accounts. PNG University of Technology has been very kind enough to allow us to use Facebook after 4.06 pm.That is enough time for us to communicate items of study and learning interests for our students and colleagues.

Santa concludes by saying, "whether or not a president chooses to engage in digital communication, social media is helping to shape the environment of his or her institution. If that institution is to thrive (not just exist), leaders need to take a look that is long, slow, and careful at the media that are brief, quick, and provisional".

This reminds me of our Vice Chancellor at the Papua New Guinea University of Technology Dr Albert Schram. He communicates with us using his blog and he is also on Facebook. This is a good sign of taking the lead in using the social media for communication in an academic environment.

Blogging for Teaching & Learning

Blogging is synonymous with writing. When i am blogging I am writing and any piece of writing, picture or illustration is called a post that appear on my blog. For example, i am now blogging on Blogging for Teaching & Learning. The purpose of this post is to share ideas on how one may use a a blog and other web 2 applications for teaching and learning. It may not be perfect but it is a start for the beginner.

If a lecturer's field of expertise is in Electrical Engineering, he/she may wish to create a blog on this subject purposely to communicate teaching and learning activities with students and other concerned colleagues.

Lecture Notes

If the lecturer intends to distribute his/her notes to students before or after presentation he/she may post the notes on her blog. Students will access the notes from the blog and my cut and paste to their laptops or other devices such as mobile phones.

Additional notes

Any other additional notes such as related readings or links to sources on the web may also be posted for students access and usage.

Questions

Student should be allowed to post questions relating to course work on the blog and answered promptly by the lecturer any time or during arranged times between lecturers and students.

Assignments

Instructions for assignments may also be posted and accessed by students.

Links to My Drive

My Drive (Google Drive) can be used to exchange large documents with students. Students may follow created links to navigate between a blog and My Drive to access documents.

Access by Students

Two ways that documents can be shared are; 1. by creating links in documents ; and 2. by gmail accounts.

Security for originality of posts
a. Rules
Rules of responsible usage should be posted and should include maintaining the integrity of documents.

b. Keep copy elsewhere

An original copy of each document or post should be kept elsewhere.

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Acknowledgement

By way of acknowledgement i am inspired by Knovel blog that shares information on engineering. It is a very good platform for communication between professional engineers, academics in engineering and students. I follow this blog and its posts appear in tolailanguagechange.blogspot.com. It helps me keep abreast with information in the field of engineering since i work in a university that has a curriculum centered in engineering, science and technology. From time to time i refer students to Knovel blog. 

Web 2 for Teaching and Learning

Web 2 For Teaching and Learning

The term social media evokes socializing in Facebook, Twitter. and other Web 2 applications. I believe this is the case with many of my colleagues. Many of them are users of Facebook and Twitter, including me, and maintain a wide network sharing ideas and interests. It is only recently that i started drawing my colleagues attention to the usefulness of the social media for teaching, learning, and related activities in the workplace.

In simple terms Web 2 is the second generation of  Web 1 . Web 1 generation is where users were, and still are for many,  only users of content on the Internet. Web 2 hosts the social media and allows the user to be both a user, creator, and distributor  of content.

I have been learning to use Web 2 applications in the workplace for over a year. During this time i learnt to blog, use My Drive and a few other applications. I taught myself to use these application because most are easy to learn with a lot of help available now on the net. In the process i found two of my colleagues (David Decka and Julie Tum) were doing the same. We began sharing interests and skills in the use of the social media in our work routines. For example, we began sharing documents using My Drive making it easier for us to work collaboratively and share ideas quickly. David Decka is the acting systems librarian and Julie Tum is the Library Department's secretary.

An opportunity came this year for the three of us to attend training in  Web 2 and Social Media for Development. The training was held for a week at NARI, Bubia, from the 26th to 30th May 2014. The focus of the course was on organization and management of information using Web 2 applications in the agriculture industry. We attended the course purposely to help us adapt the knowledge and skills in an academic environment.

On our return from the training we conducted a workshop for our colleagues in the Library to share the knowledge and skills with them.  Our focus was to get our colleagues to use Web 2 application in the workplace such as sharing information with one another, with students, and other colleagues in the campus. Our small network of Web 2 applications users now is slowly increasing. Staff in the library are beginning to exchange information concerning work.

Library staff posing for a photo during Web 2 training. Photo by Julie Tum.

Recently, 17th to 18 September, 2014 we conducted a second training for a small number of lecturers and administrative staff on campus. The aim of the two day training is using web 2 applications for teaching, learning, and related work. Topics covered included Blogging, My Drive,and Dropbox,.

The photographs show some of the participants during the recent workshop conducted through TLMU at ADOC.

Roberto Soto

Anna Wakana

Marilyn Lucas

Wale Molumi