Sch. of Information Management & Systems. Infosys 101: Information Systems. Spr 1997. Buckland.

Exercise 11: Finding sources.   Due May 1.

The purpose of this exercise is expand your ability to find material for your essays.

In previous exercises you learned how to use the MELVYL online library catalog (Exercises 1, 5 & 7), and gophers (Exercise 3). Exercise 6 provided an introduction to the World Wide Web using using addresses (Uniform Resource Locators - URLs) and search engines. For your essays the specialized indexes in back of MELVYL such as MAG, NEWS and COMP (Exercise 10) are likely to be more useful than the catalog of books.

Librarians depend heavily on evaluative guides to reference works, notably the Guide to reference books, 11th ed. edited by Robert Balay. This is widely held in libraries' reference collections, usually at
Z1035.1 .G84 1996.

Now comparable guides are appearing for Internet resources:

1. Try the Internet Public Library, an electronic Public Library maintained by the School of Information, University of Michigan, a school rather like our School of Information Management and Systems.
http://ipl.sils.umich.edu   

Go to the Ready Reference section: http://ipl.sils.umich.edu/ref/RR/
and find something, preferably relevant to your Essay topic. What?




2. Now find something using the similar service provided by Gale Research, a publisher of reference works:
http://www.cyberhound.com




3. Many of the essay topics in this course newspapers are highly topical so newspapers are a good source. MELVYL's NEWS database provides access to a few leading newspapers. For a local example, find something relevant to your interests in the The New Gate, which indexes the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner and channel 4 KRON:
http://www.sfgate.com/




4. [OPTIONAL] A new www version of the MELVYL system has now become available with some features for helping you adapt or re-focus your search. Check it out!
http://www.melvyl.ucop.edu

PS (1) Also ask knowledgeable people if you can find them.
(2) If you come across comparable general guides, please let me have a note of them.   (Revised 4/22/97)