Explore the Hunt Library
Looking at my schedule, the time, and assignments that still need my attention, exploration of any place for any amount of time simply did not seem to be time responsibly spent. For any reason was the qualifier that brought me back to reality. It is part of an assignment. Okay, I'll run in, click on a couple things and run out - in and out before the cookie registers.
I spent almost two hours looking at the layout, navigating around the site, and keeping myself amused over the fact that "scholarly" is actually a word and smart people use it. I digress. What I found is a beautifully arranged, fully populated, ready to answer any question I might have, library. It was even silent! In my fascination I realized I had never seen or visited an online library before. If I have and somehow forgot about it, it could not have been this library. A true account.
Over the years I have worked my way up to "search apprentice" using online search engines. Given enough time, I can usually find what I want. Searching for fun and entertainment, no problem - word in word out. Magic. Need to find anything? Not going to happen. And what do I have right before my eyes? A very serious looking search engine in a setting that I, most likely, will not be searching for anything fun.
I should say I was genuinely impressed. During my adventure, I did get to do a few searches and found a few topics of interest. They will either be the subject of some project I will, no doubt, be assigned sometime over the next three years. If not, I will include them in my professional development reading. I intend use Hunt Library as my first line resource for discipline related research. The information is there, most of it can be cited, and I think the search engine likes me. I ran five or six different searches that produced almost a million returns (on topic) sorted by discipline and document type. If I run short on information, there is always Wikipedia!
I did indeed find the journals and articles section. It is an impressive collection as well. Did you know if you select the business discipline searching for leadership articles with music as a subtopic, you will still get 94 returns! Impressive! I digress.
To determine if a resource is scholarly, look at the review process. "Scholarly sources are peer reviewed or published in a recognized scholarly source, like a journal or a university publisher."(Internet) Some can be found using internet search engines as well. I searched Hunt and Google with identical inputs. Both searches returned over 50,000 documents and the first five from Hunt were listed within the first twenty on Google. The articles were the same. However, the returns from the Hunt library are the ones to use. They are original documents and contain all of the pedigree information to include citing information. The Google returns I looked at were scanned copies of the article. While research is still not high on my "want to" list...okay, not ranked...at least I know the information is out there.
Reference:
"What is a Scholarly Source? http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~janzb/courses/scholarly1.htm
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