Learning Between Googling and Scholarly Research
Jinfo Blog

31st October 2007

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Life-long learning is never so true as it is in the broadband-connected world today. There are endless new challenges in personal and business life that we'd like to understand and new ideas we'd like to try out. Before considering reading a book or attending any of the ever more seminars or workshops available online and offline, many of us turn to Google & Co. when we get a topic to research. Often we find useful Web sites, articles, news, blogs, and forums, etc. Sometimes we are lucky. Sometime we are indeed amazed and thankful to Google & Co. for delivering good results, all without having to think of budget. Regardless the debate on the $ value of searching time and whether premium sources with price tags really provide more authoritative information, it is simply convenient and practical to turn to the Internet to get started with a new topic. Besides searching on the popular search engines and meta-search engines, there are specialized portals, subject directories or even small tipples like this http://www.freepint.com/issues/251007.htm#favourites in Free Pint's eNewsletter http://www.freepint.com/issues/. Yes we could also apply relevant techniques to search the invisible web. Between googling for information of mixed media and mixed quality, and the scholarly approach of reviewing reputable literature like the way most doctoral students start with their dissertations, a practical middle ground is to read online expert articles and white papers that have gone through some kind of quality control by human gatekeepers. There are many sources of this nature on the Internet today, and more are coming, including many interesting articles appearing in blogs. Here are two examples: Using so-called article marketing, ezine@rticles http://ezinearticles.com is used by many small business owners to get a message of their business out and knowledgeable individuals to build credibility for their expertise. The published articles can be reprinted in entirety by e-newsletters alike. The articles are tagged in about 300 categories and can be browsed or searched. For example, searching for “cultural context” returns over 300 articles, many are interesting read indeed. Unlike ezine@rticles Technology Evaluation Center http://www.technologyevaluation.com (short for TEC) is a vertical portal for the IT industry. Although the reports and premium services are not free, there is a large collection of white papers and webcasts available with a free registration. The papers are mostly submitted by vendors. While contents of such undeniably contain certain degree of sales pitching, they are often very informative and reflect where the latest technology trends are.

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