Here is the shortened version of the full lesson, and we didn't even get to all of it in class.
Special Note: For your project, you need at least three sources. Wikipedia always must be confirmed by another source, so if you include it, you would need four sources.
1. Create a list of search terms to use when looking for information about the nonfiction setting for your individual book.
* Often you can find a site about the book or find the author's official site that may tell you about some of the reality behind the fiction.
* You could look up places and characters you think may be real.
* Don't look up fictional characters or places.
* Look up the "big" subjects such as "holocaust" or "Japanese Internment" or "Pony Express." You search terms could be the sorts of words and terms you would look up in an encyclopedia.
Words that you would just look up the meaning for in the dictionary may not make good search terms.
2. You may want to check the media center or public library catalog for nonfiction books about your research topic.
3. Try some of the best places to search on the Internet.
A. Go to our school web page and scroll to the bottom of the home page to find the link to Pioneer -- Utah's Online Library.
The user name is pioneer and the password is time.
The best places to search there for this assignment are Sirs Discoverer and World Book.
Type in your term or terms and look for the best sources.
On Sirs Discoverer, I typed in Holocaust, and found this article: http://discoverer.prod.sirs.com/discoweb/disco/do/article?urn=urn%3Asirs%3AUS%3BARTICLE%3BART%3B0000025141http://discoverer.prod.sirs.com/discoweb/disco/do/article?urn=urn%3Asirs%3AUS%3BARTICLE%3BART%3B0000025141
If I decide to use some of this information, I would make sure I save the citation information, including the URL.
B. Try CactiSearch (cactisearch.com) which is a metasearch engine which searches several regular search engines.
C. Try clusty.com and notice the categories at the left which may help you narrow your search.
D. Try kartoo.com and notice how it is different from the other search engines you have used.
E. Try dogpile.com
Notice the suggestions at the right.
F. Try using an advanced search on google,or yahoo, or clusty, or dogpile, or another search engine, using special search words and signs. Often on a search engine, to the right of the search bar is the word ADVANCED or ADVANCED SEARCH. Try clicking on it and you can narrow your search.
Even without an advanced search, you can narrow or broaden your search by using these special terms and signs:
AND If you put "and" between two terms, the search engine will select items that have both of the terms.
OR If you put "or" between two terms, the search engine will select everything that has either one.
- (minus sign) If you use a minus sign before a term, the search engine will reject any item that contains that term.
" " (quotation marks) If you use quotation marks around a phrase, the search engine will select only those items that contain that set of words together in that order.
Giving Credit Where Credit is Due
I could go to citationmachine.net, select MLA at the left, then on-line journal or magazine article at the left, and enter my information to create a Works Cited Entry for the above article which would end up looking something like this:
Works Cited
When you use World Book Online, each article provides a works cited entry at the bottom of the page.
When you have a Works Cited entry, make sure you know which information you got from that source.
When I find a fact, I could go ahead and put it into my own words with an informal citation. Here's an example that I took from the above article:
According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, in their publication “The Holocaust: An Historical Summary,” the approximately nine million Jews murdered by the Nazis from 1933 to 1945, weren’t the only ones the Nazis persecuted and killed. They also murdered, persecuted, and enslaved Gypsies, mentally and physically disabled people, Soviet prisoners of war, communists, socialists, members of trade unions, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Poles and other people from Slavic nations, and more.
The bolded part is the "informal citation" where I told where I got my information.
This is the works cited entry that goes with my fact:
Works Cited
You can copy the Works Cited Entry (from citationmachine.net or from the bottom of the page on World Book) and paste it into a Word (or other word-processor) document. Put your facts on one page and your Works Cited entries on another.
Also try easybib.com to find out if you like it better than citationmachine.net.)
The facts will be used to create your project/presentation.
