Webbing (Searching)
How I am searching: past and present strategies

My personal style for researching a topic is doing the “casting a net” approach. I would know the general topic- find a few sources and start reading. From there, I’d create something. It served me fairly well but in retrospect generated a fair amount of anxiety. I hadn’t defined the main themes, determined questions of importance and then proceeded. I would think students of all ages would be better served by a more meaningful search approach.

Reading on the topic of searching for information, I came across a powerful expression ‘Purpose Determines Strategy’ coined by Daniel Callison. Essentially, Callison suggests “the intended goal or purpose of instruction will determine the strategy most suited to accomplish that goal.” An inquiry model challenges me to come up with my own research agenda. As I continue, I see how critical the defining of the questions and theme are to my search.

Some search strategies that I am currently employing are the following:

1. Browsing: My initial searching began with simply browsing. Just as I would when I go shopping, I search through our library IPAC, did a MegaCrawler Search, a Google searched, looked at images and pathfinders and bookmarked all that I found. Marcia Bates from the University of Washington, calls this type of search tactic as wandering. It is a stage that stirs the imagination and ignites thinking. I felt it was exciting but I quickly wanted to get more control and becoming further organized.

2. Consulting: I also called the IUPUI library to ask for assistance in getting journals etc. from the main branch. Further, I emailed a museum in Vancouver, Canada to locate information about Haida Indians.

3. Refining My Focus: As I continue, I have refined my timeline and also my focus. I feel that only a few points on each area are necessary to create a simple brochure about the Haida Way. In order to see if I am able to communicate this effectively to the audience, I asked a fellow librarian for feedback as to the breadth of the topic. The librarian- frankly said, Keep it direct and simple. She recommended searching for answers to each of the questions. She liked the clarity of the main themes- the origins, family, livelihood, art and myths. Her thought was to create a chart that shows the themes, questions and sources for answers. She felt that would help to provide for a more diverse source search. I would agree- I could also then assure that my resources are varied- from books, to images, to videos, to journals, and internet sources etc. I will need to return to this.

4. Listing of Interesting Facts and Location: As Kuhlthau’s ISP Exploration Information stage encourages the action of listing interesting facts, ideas, names and events. She also promotes keeping bibliographic citations of useful sources and potential leads. I began this process by book marking in a folder called Haida on my laptop. This grew to be very large. I have since sub divided the sources into several folders: These include bibliographic sources, the origins, family, etc (themes as previously stated). I find that this approach will be more user friendly when I begin synthesizing information.

5. Bibliographic Hunting: Ok, I have done this for a long time. So have you right? Marcia Bates calls this Bibble. I find reliable sources and then check out their sources. I also look for key phrases within good sources to use for other searches.
An example of this is the use of terms from Haida people. I found a source called http://www.civilization.ca/aborig/haida/haindexe.html. From there I came up with other terms and also sites to link to.


More webbing to come…