10/8

   My major discipline in GALILEO is psychology. Upon searching for one I have never worked in before I realized that many of the sources use ProQuest and EBSCOhost. Both databases I know I’ve used before. I found one call “web of knowledge” it is a Thomas Reuters website that is apparently “Is the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals” according to their about us page (http://thomsonreuters.com/about/). I searched “baseball” since I am currently writing about my Steve Blass Disease project. You would never guess what one of the key words in the title of the first link was “Decision taking under pressure: Evidence on football manager dismissals in Argentina and their consequences”. Football? No, I said baseball. 

What is kind of funny is that the seventh source mentioned the word baseball and the nifty database highlighted the word baseball for me. That could be useful during research.

The difference between subject specific databases and the Discovery tool is that the subject specific database is great for something directly relating that field. Like baseball does not directly relate to psychology. If I searched something like PTSD, a psychology database would be preferred over a literature database. If I wanted to search baseball I would choose the Discovery tool because I could use information that could fall under any category (history of baseball, baseball in the media, etc).

10/3

Scholarly:

ADAMS, FRANK D., and GLORIA J. LAWRENCE. "Bullying Victims: The Effects Last Into College." American Secondary Education 40.1 (2011): 4-13. Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 Oct. 2012.

The following terms to describe the characteristics and lasting effects of bullying: safety, exclusion, isolation, abuse, alienation, lonely and a rite of passage.

I plan to use this source as a major reference because it is a comprehensive study about the lasting effects of bullied people.

Popular:

Bhanoo, Sindya N. "Effects of Early Bullying Don't Last in Birds." New York Times 28 June 2011: 3. TOPICsearch. Web. 4 Oct. 2012.

This is an article that says that birds that were bullied by their hatchling siblings showed no difference in aggression when intruders invaded their nests.

This is a counter argument that could possibly be used to break down my argument about bullying, but I can argue that humans are more sophisticated than birds. These birds are going off instinct. Parents protecting their children wouldn’t differ if they were bullied at a young age, so it is not surprising a bird would be similar.

Word Count: 181

10/1

GALILEO is an acronym for Georgia Library Learning Online. This I did not know. GALILEO is an online library, not a database. GALILEO contains a large variety of databases though. The hierarchy goes Articles within Journals within Databases within Disciplines within GALILEO similar to how the library organizes books within bookshelves within call numbers within a library. Databases are defined as “a comprehensive collection of related data organized for convenient access, generally in a computer” by dictionary.com. It organizes information typically by related topics such as social sciences or medicine. GALILEO is an excellent online resource when looking for sources about a topic and do not have the time to stay in the library all night hunting down a relevant book on a very narrow topic. For example: I am doing a research project on the “Steve Blass Disease”, but the official book about Steve Blass’ “disease” is not available by the library, is not recognized as a real disease (because it is not) and the synonyms are not attracting large peer-reviewed results. For those who do not know, Steve Blass was a pitcher for the Pittsburg Pirates who after winning the World Series, suddenly could not pitch. It is a curious phenomenon that I have to write a 10 page paper on for my Sports Psychology class. By using GALILEO, I found plenty more reliable sources. GALILEO has many uses and is beneficial for any kind of research.

Word Count: 239

Research Portfolio 1

Post at least two books related to your topic including citations and an annotation summarizing each book (1-2 sentences) and how you plan to use it in your research project (2-3 sentences).

Thompson, David, and Tiny Arora. Bullying: effective strategies for long-term improvement. London: Routledge Falmer, 2002. Print.

Summarizing: Over ten years of researching bullying, this book is designed for faculty within the school administration and researchers determined to tackle the issue of bullying head on. The authors examine how bullying begins, the impact of bullying on the victimized child and how the extent of bullying in the classroom can be reliably measured and assessed while explaining how to set up anti-bullying initiatives which will maintain their effectiveness over years.

In my research: The section on the effects of the victimized child would be most beneficial for my topic of the long-lasting (psychological) effects of bullying. This book is more about prevention, but there is a reason to prevent it. I hope they elaborate on that reason.

Kevorkian, Meline M., and Robin Antona. 101 facts about bullying: what everyone should know. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2008. Print.

Summarizing: The authors believe the in order to prevent bullying: everyone must know the myths and facts of bullying.

In my research: This would be an incredible book to use because it reveals how bullying is not taken seriously in school. It covers each topic in an organized and easy-to-follow kind of way. It even has specific chapters on victims and bullies.

Word Count: 250

Monday's (9/24) Blog Post

In class I do not believe we talked about the peer-review process which makes this blog seem like a summary of the article on CourseDen.

Apparently, peer-reviewed material can be wrong. This is something I did not know which makes me kind of mad honestly. What is the point of narrowing my search to only peer-reviewed articles if it is not correct information?

Why is peer-review important?

From what I understand, it really isn’t. The information can be invalid regardless whether an article is reviewed or not. This is crazy because I have searched only peer-reviewed articles in these data bases provided by GALILEO for years. There would be hundreds of articles available but NONE would be peer-reviewed. The ones that were peer-reviewed usually didn’t go with my topic.

-What are some ways that you can tell if an article is peer-reviewed, or scholarly?
First: Search Galileo, those tend to be scholarly. Second: check the peer-reviewed check box in Galileo. Third: Check their references. The source you get your peer-reviewed article plays a large part in its credibility.
-When do you want to use peer-reviewed research in your work?
You would use it when you can but it is not essential to the process of research. If you have a basic idea of what you are researching about you should have a general idea when something is far-fetched.
-Also think about in what ways YOU engage in informal and/or formal peer-review in your personal and researching life
I don’t think I engage in peer-reviewing in my personal life. In my researching life, I am often flying solo so peers do not tend to review me. If someone presented me with a topic, verbally or written, I would give them my thoughts on their concepts but not formally.


Word Count: 297