This week’s readings brought in a lot of information about the same subject in so many different ways that, at times, it was difficult to process. While I enjoyed the Markey chapters that addressed the more formal terminology in approaches to searches, I feel it was harder to comprehend because I first dealt with the Bergson-Michelson materials that address the same material in a much more informal way due to the audience she is often addressing. As she stated in her chapter, “informal language lightens the tone,” and while she was speaking of another scholar, I found Bergson-Michelson’s work much easier to digest because of the tone she took in both her webinar and her writing (Bergson-Michelson, 45).
Bergson-Michelson’s webinar made me think about sources in a more concrete terms than I ever have in research. The idea of imagining your source was a completely new subject to me. While she discussed this idea I understood it as the way I did process my search for sources, but having a way to organize my thoughts in such searches may have made research more productive in my past. This was made clearer as she began her discussion on the differences between fishing searches and stepping-stone sources. Being able to distinguish the two make searches and research more productive in the long run. She makes a statement that most students are not educated how to search, which I can agree with. My research practices, by the time I needed to develop them, were expected to already have been established. A concrete approach to searching and researching as Bergson-Michelson sets out in her webinar, I feel, will create more capable information users from an earlier age. We shouldn’t be expected to either know how to research or not, all users should be given the foundations that Bergson-Michelson has so clearly established here.
Bergson-Michelson continues her clear-cut explanations in “Statistical Storytelling” chapter. It is often easy for me to forget a common theme that was brought up throughout this chapter, data is evidence not an argument, which makes statistical storytelling so important in writing. Bergson-Michelson hits this fact even harder in her discussion in the importance of language and how language changes from reading, writing, and searching. She also brought to the forefront concepts that often slip through the cracks when researching and writing. I know I’ve forgotten them on more than one occasion. Audience and users matter. The audience must be thought of when a researcher writes, as to provide the correct type of language for optimal understanding. This exact approach is also why the user matters. To properly analyze evidence, whether it is an historical document or a secondary source, the writer is important to understand motivations, biases, and perspectives of the topic being addressed. The way that writers discuss and interpret data to support their argument, for example, provides understanding for the writer’s views, but most be written in a way that the target audience can understand, which is why statistical storytelling becomes so important for data-based writing.
Markey was much more formal in the discussion of search and its intricacies. While she provided a great general overview of search and brought up tools I didn’t know existed (like Controlled Vocabularies in databases), her work was more difficult to digest after the informality of Bergson-Michelson. Still, Markey took keys of the search that I believed I understood decently, and broke them apart in a way I never considered. The CV was the one that sticks out most poignantly, as I search most databases the same way, not understanding the basic makeup of their search abilities. I will consider this in my future research, and hopefully it will make my searches more fruitful.
Josh Catone’s “Google-fu” also will influence the ways that I search. While I do not often do research on Google, unless I am searching for a known item on Google Scholar upon failing to find it in a database I have access to, I was completely unaware of how to set up a true Google search to get the best results. The infographic was not only helpful, it opened my mind to a whole new way of considering the search engine in the beginnings of my research process.
Raven K 