Karaganda State Medical University Department of Medical Biophysics and Informatics Topic: Use of search engines and electronic resources in the professional purposes Submitted by: Smagulova G.B. Group: GM Checked by: Kapasheva A.S. Karaganda, 2018

GENERAL USE OF THE INTERNET AND ELECTRONIC RESOURCES

Most of the students interviewed reported that they have a computer or a laptop at home. Those who reside on the Columbia campus have an Ethernet connection, so they typically access the Internet from home. Students who reside off- campus and who have a cable Internet connection also access the Internet primarily from home. Off-campus students whose Internet connection is through a phone line typically utilize school facilities to do most of their online work. Nearly all participants reported that they use the Internet for personal, work, and school related reasons. It essentially pervades every aspect of their lives. As one student put it "it is like television….it has become my television. I dont know what I would do without it".

The Internet is used by these students for many things, such as to look up information on events, get directions or telephone numbers, get information on products, and to shop. Nearly anything that needs to be done can be done on the Internet. This holds true for school related information as well. Literature searches can be conducted online, articles and books can be found online, and various facts can be found online. Most students said they use the Internet everyday for a couple of hours. Use of the Internet for school related purposes varies depending on the time of the semester and the cycle of their course work. However, when working on a term paper or research paper use of electronic resources is very high.

For schoolwork, these students use the Internet as a portal for information. The most common types of sites visited are databases such as library catalogues and databases with journal articles or books. When using electronic resources, the most common place to start is by using Columbias CLIO, or one of the other online databases that Columbia has a subscription to, such as Jstor, Lexus Nexus, Georef, or ProQuest. Other popular electronic resources for International Affairs/Political Science students are news sites such as ABCNews.com, institutional web sites, think-tank web sites, and government agency websites. Likewise, Earth and Environmental Science students seek out faculty and university web sites, and web sites or databases where they can find images related to their work. These students learn about websites and databases primarily from other students, links that they happen upon while on another site, links they get from search engines, and sometimes through their instructors (although this is the least common method of learning about web sites and databases).

There are three main ways the students interviewed proceed with the research process for a term or research paper. 1. The most common method is the traditional method of asking ones professor or another expert in the field for resources relating to the topic at hand. This can include reprints of articles, or the names of other researchers in the field of interest. In addition, these students will look in the bibliography of class readings to learn of other relevant articles. Once the student has this foundation of relevant information, they typically turn to CLIO or another online database such as Jstor or Nexus-Lexus that the library has made available to them. At this point, they will look up articles that they have references to, and they will do keyword searches to see what other relevant articles or books they can find. Articles that are available online are downloaded for future reading (they are almost never read online). For articles that are not available online, students do make the trip to the library. However, most of the students interviewed do not find that this is necessary. Interestingly, it was more common for undergraduate students to comment that they will often go to the library to get articles and books even if they are available online.

2. A few of the students said the first place they go when conducting a research paper is directly online to databases such as CLIO, Lexus-Nexus etc. Here the students will use the database search engine to do keyword searches. They may go to several of these databases and gather as many articles or books as they find. Undergraduates are more likely than graduate students to rely on books (rather than journal articles) as a beginning point in the research process.

3. Two of the interviewees said they first go to a general Internet search engine such as Google and do a keyword search. This gives them a general idea about their topic. One student said that one advantage they found to doing a general Internet search first was that information comes up that you wouldnt otherwise know or learn about.

Some of the students reported that they rely only on sites or databases that are linked to the schools web site, with the assumption that these are approved resources. Students also reported a common tendency to gather too much information in this search phase, and then need to whittle down what they have in order to form a coherent topic.