Information Seeking Process

With so much information available these days, it is important to have strategies available  to help determine whether information is useful and reliable for a specific search.  Often I find my first search takes me to Google as it is readily available and quick to generate results with minimal effort.  This helps me get a basic understanding of the topic I am interested in.  I am always mindful of the results I get as the information is often not scholarly and definitely questionable at times.  This initial search often helps me brainstorm other terms I can use in future searches.  

For my initial search I used the terms 'inquiry and investigation in primary science'.  This search returned 82,100,000 results, a bit overwhelming to look through.  Fortunately, some of the results located on the first page were of great relevance to my information Learning Activity as they related directly to Primary Connections.

This search was improved by placing quotation marks around terms that I wanted to keep together.  This helped limit the results to those with the exact phrases I placed in quotations but the results were still too numerous at 223,000.

I decided to narrow my search to focus specifically on 'scientific inquiry' as this relates more closely to my information learning activity.  By placing 'scientific' before inquiry, I reduced the number of results to 6,140.

Using a negative before a word can help eliminate any unwanted results but I felt this strategy could not be applied successfully to my current search.  I felt frustrated with the volume of information still available to me.  Kulthau (2006)  identifies two critical stages for intervention during the inquiry process, one of which is the Exploration stage.   Confusion and uncertainty are common emotions felt by people during this stage due to uncertainty and an abundance of information.   Knowing that Google sorts web page results based on their relevance, helped me overcome my feeling of frustration and find some useful resources for my context.  To further my information seeking journey I decided that Google Scholar would be my next search engine as I am mainly interested in scholarly information.


References:

Kuhlthau, C. 2006. Information Literacy through Guided Inquiry: Preparing Students for the 21st Century. Retrieved 3 September 2011 from http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~kuhltau/recent_presentations/iasl2/IASL%202006.doc


Ownedboxes. (2009). Web Search Strategies in Plain English [Video file]. CLN650 Information Learning Nexus: [Learning Resources, Expert Searching]. Retrieved from http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_76514_1%26url%3D


therobba. (2007). googles dark side - google conspiracy [video file]. CLN650 Information Learning Nexus: [Learning Resources, Expert Searching]. Retrieved from http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_76514_1%26url%3D