Chapter 4. Information Literacy and Digital Research

Chapter 4. Information Literacy and Digital Research

A search box will give you something. Information literacy is the skill of deciding whether that something can support a university claim. For business writing you will need sources a reader can check, not only sources that match your opinion.

Five quick tests

Before you trust a page, ask five questions. Currency: When was it written or updated, and does your question need a recent figure? Relevance: Does it answer your question, or only share a keyword? Authority: Who wrote it, and do they have a reason to know? A professor, a government statistical office, or a journal with named editors is stronger than an unsigned product page. Accuracy: Do they show where the numbers came from, and can you find a second source that agrees? Purpose: Is the page trying to inform, to sell, to persuade, or to entertain? A sales page can be a primary example of marketing. It is a weak source for an independent fact about an industry.

Blogs, news, and peer-reviewed work

A blog can be expert, anonymous, or advertising. Read the author note. A news article can report a study; follow the link to the study if the assignment wants the research itself. Peer-reviewed articles were read by other specialists before publication. They are slower and denser, and they are the right tool when you need a checked research claim. For this free course you are not asked to buy a journal subscription. You are asked to tell these types apart and to say, in your own words, why you would or would not cite each one.

A small research path

Write the question in one sentence. List the words a specialist would use, not only the words you already know. Search the course readings first, then a library or an open database. Open the item and read the abstract or the first section before you download ten files. Save the author, year, title, and the address of the page. If you cannot find those four, you cannot cite it honestly. Stop when you have three sources you can explain, not thirty you have not read.

Worked judgment

You need a current definition of “asynchronous learning.” A textbook chapter from the course, a university teaching center page with a date and an author, and a peer-reviewed article are usable. An unsigned meme, a comment thread, and a page that only sells software are not enough by themselves. You may mention the software page as an example of a vendor claim if you label it that way.

Self-check

1. A page has no date and no author. What test does it fail first? Answer: Authority, and often currency, because you cannot tell who is speaking or when.
2. When is a company blog acceptable? Answer: As an example of what that company claims, labeled as such — not as an independent research finding.
3. What four details must you save in order to cite? Answer: Author, year, title, and the page address or other location.