Research tools – Page 2 – Deneroff Education and Writing Coaching

As valuable as individual search engines are, whether Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo, they do have their limitations. Some of these include getting inundated with too many results, which can be somewhat alleviated by knowing how to structure your search.

You can modify your search terms to narrow your search. For instance, when looking for material on pioneering film director D.W. Griffith and film editing, I could just enter his name in Google and get “about 466,000 results.” Adding the term “parallel editing,” a film editing technique associated with Griffith, gets me “about 4,200 results.” This is more to the point and a lot less intimidating. However, there is an even better method if you’re willing to put in some time and effort by building your own Google Custom Search Engine.

Like a number of instructors, I created my own Custom Search Engine to help students in my film, television, animation, motion graphics and visual effects classes with their research: “Cinema Studies 101 Search Engine: A Search Engine for the Moving Image Arts.” Though I’m retired from full-time teaching, I still maintain it for my own use and for readers of my blog. I designed it to enable researchers to find articles that would be suitable for use in academic papers of all kinds, from term papers to PhD dissertations; needless to say, it does not include Wikipedia. You can check out my listing of sites searched to give you some idea of what can be done. But there is nothing that says you can’t construct one to fit your individual needs.

I have found that in using the free Google Custom Search Engine, there are some limitations. The main one is that it limits you to 100 search results. This is balanced, however, by the quality of the results. As such, I have usually found it more useful than a standard Google search.

Nancy Minicozzi’s YouTube video embedded above is a good introduction to how to do your own Google Custom Search Engine. However, it has been my experience that you do not necessarily need your own website or blog to make use of it; for instance, I first tested mine out by putting the code on my desktop and launching it with a browser. (If you do plan on using one in a Google Site, then check out Minicozzi’s comments here.)

Novelist Philip Roth who had a problem with his Wikipedia entry.

When I used to list the dos and don’ts for my students writing term papers, I warned them

not to cite Wikipedia as a source. At the same time, I also said it wasn’t a bad idea to consult Wikipedia

in writing your paper. While this may seem contradictory and perhaps hypocritical, I assure you it is not.

The most basic reason for not citing a Wikipedia article is that your professor will almost automatically disallow it and your grade can suffer. The articles also fail to meet one of the most traditional criteria for evaluating a published source.

As I noted in yesterday’s post, Wikipedia articles might be seen as term papers rather than original scholarly research. In fact, the guidelines for contributors specifically state:

“Wikipedia does not publish original research or original thought. This includes unpublished facts, arguments, speculation, and ideas, as well as any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position. This means that Wikipedia is not the place to publish your own opinions, experiences, arguments, or conclusions.”

Given these rules, it is understandable that their entries tend to repeat the standard narrative on any topic.

More important, almost anybody can write or rewrite an article, and the author’s identity is by policy anonymous. So there is no way to tell whether it was written by high school dropout or by a specialist with a PhD. How then, professors will point out, can you evaluate the validity of an article if you are unable to check out the author’s credentials?

But if you’re unfamiliar with a topic, a good Wikipedia article can provide a useful summary of information about it; in addition, its citations, lists of further reading and external links can also give you a quick overview of the literature in the field—which is one the values of a good encyclopedia.

However, Wikipedia articles can at times be wildly inaccurate and misleading, especially in regards to lesser known topics. Scholars who come across one of these erroneous entries may not be inclined to complain or take the time to rewrite it. (Why bother rewriting something only to have some person or persons unknown promptly change it?)

The seeming absurdity of some of Wikipedia’s policies was revealed in 2012, when Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Philip Roth tried to correct a “misstatement” about the inspiration for his novel, The Human Stain. However, his request was rejected because Roth was not considered a credible source of information about himself. However, they did note the corrections when Roth published an open letter to Wikipedia in The New Yorker, since, under their rules, it was a more credible source! For a more nuanced history of this episode, I recommend two pieces published in The Guardian here and here.

— Harvey Deneroff