UNC

Course Schedule

Date Topic / Class Activities Required Readings, Viewings and Assignments
Aug 20
Welcome

Overview of course/Information explosion


Aug 25
The Science of Information.



Aug 27
Information seeking and behavior

  • Case, D.O. (2012). Information behavior: An introduction. In Looking for information: A survey of research on information seeking, needs, and behavior (3rd ed.) (pp. 3-14). London: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    Freely available via Google books
  • Bohannon, J. (2011). Searching for the Google effect on people's memory. Science, 333, 277.
    Note: you should be prompted to log into the UNC Library's subscription using your ONYEN/Password
Sep 3
Information Seeking in Real Life
  • Case, D.O. (2012). Common examples of information behavior. In Looking for information: A survey of research on information seeking, needs, and behavior (3rd ed.) (pp. 20-42). London: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Sep 8
Information organization: Categorization
Sep 10
Information organization: Classification, controlled vocabularies, metadata and facets
Sep 15
The research process
  • Neuman, W.L. (2009). Understanding research. Boston, MA: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon. Read part of chapter 1: What is Empirical Social Research, bottom of page 8 through page 22

Sep 17
The research process pt. 2
Sep 22
Conducting Research
Slides
  • Ford, N. (2012). Book Chapter: Ford, N. (2012). Using the Web for Research. Chapter 3:
    Clarifying What is Required of You. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks,
    CA.

Sep 24
Identifying types of
information sources

Finding Encyclopedias Assignment
Sep 29
Evaluating information,
approaches and techniques
for the individual

The Wikipedia Challenge Due 10/3 by 5:00 pm. Send via email.

Lecture Slides

Oct 6
Analyzing scholarly research publications

Oct 8
Keywords and Mapping Search Approaches
  • Book Chapter: Ford, N. (2012). Using the Web for Research. Chapter 7 -- Mapping search approaches & techniques to information needs. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA. (available on Sakai)

Oct 13
Specialized info sources: Web Resources
Google, Bing, Wikipedia, Yahoo!, etc.
Oct 15
Specialized info sources: Academic Resources

Oct 20
No Class - Midterm Test
Midterm Exam [.doc] distributed in class - due 10/27/14 via email
Oct 22
TBA

Oct 27
Specialized info sources: Statistics and demographics

Oct 29
Specialized literature databases Search techniques (subject headings, Boolean, proximity operators) Focusing a research topic - crafting a thesis statement


Nov 3


"CLASS CANCELED"


Citation indexes

Evaluating information

MID-TERM EXAM DUE BY 5:00 PM VIA EMAIL
Nov 5
Managing Information pt 1: Multi-tasking and Productivity
Nov 10
Managing Information pt 2: Personal Information Management
Nov 12
Managing Information pt 3: Citation Managment
Mendeley
Nov 17
Online privacy

  • Price, T. (2013, October 25). Big data and privacy. CQ Researcher, 23, 909-932.
  • Singer, N. (2012). Your online attention, bought in an instant. The New York Times.
Nov 19
Primary sources and archives
  • Schmidt, L. (2011). Using archives: A guide to effective research. Society of American Archivists.
Please spend some time exploring one or more of these digital archives and collections and post your observations and questions on our discussion board in Sakai.

  • UNC's Documenting the American South
    digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes sixteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs
  • Duke Digital Collections
  • Folkstreams
    Amazing collection of documentary films relating to all kinds of American culture and people
  • National Archives
    Many people know the National Archives as the keeper of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. But they also hold in trust for the public the records of ordinary citizens for example, military records of the brave men and women who have fought for our country, naturalization records of the immigrants whose dreams have shaped our nation, and even the canceled check from the purchase of Alaska.
Nov 24
Archives and special collections
  • Fieldtrip to University Archives
    MEET IN READING ROOM ON SECOND FLOOR OF WILSON LIBRARY

After an introduction to the special collections at Wilson Library, we will be handling and reading documents from the Federal Writers' Project Papers, 1936-1940. This collection contains the life histories of about 1,200 individuals, written by about 60 members of the project after one or more interviews with the subjects. Persons interviewed, many of them African Americans, described life in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.

Matt Turi, Manuscripts and Archives Research and Instruction Librarian, will be our host.

Nov 26
No Class
Dec 1
Information Access
Dec 3
Presentations



Final
TBA