Vetting Reliable Research The John Oliver Way

-
HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver had a wonderful segment about the skewing of scientific research and how information is ultimately shared. 


Librarians would do well to incorporate this segment into a session on information literacy.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Law Library Lessons in Vendor Relations from the UC/Elsevier Split

-
Image
In early March, the University of California , one of the largest research institutions in the world, blew up negotiations with Elsevier, one of the largest publishers of research articles in the world. The university would no longer pay Elsevier millions of dollars a year to subscribe to its journals. It simply walked away. Despite months of contract negotiations , Elsevier was unwilling to meet UC’s key goal: securing universal open access to UC research while containing the rapidly escalating costs associated with for-profit journals. UC's goal of open access is something that every institution should move toward because: (1) At the same time academic institutions are paying for access to journals, their employees are providing labor to journals for free. AND (2) journals pay for the research that they publish. In the United States, research funding often comes from government agencies—in other words, from taxpayers. Yet if members of the public tried to read new acad...
Read more

AALL/LexisNexis Call for Papers 2019-2020 Now Open!

-
Image
The winners in the Open, New Member, and Student Divisions will receive $650 , and the Short Form Division winner will receive $300 , all generously donated by LexisNexis. Co-authors of winning papers share awards. Recipients are recognized during award ceremonies at the AALL Annual Meeting and will be given the opportunity to present their papers in a program. See the Call for Papers website !
Read more

Rombauer Method of Legal Research

-
Instead of getting bogged down trying to instruct on the nuts-and-bolts of each database, it is more important to emphasize a research process that works in any database. To that end, I've always taught a version of the Rombauer Method of legal research . Preliminary Analysis – developing search strings and searching secondary sources for an overview of the topic Codified Law – searching constitutions, codes, court rules, and regulations Binding Precedent – searching case law that the court must follow from a particular jurisdiction Persuasive Precedent – searching case law that the court may follow from other jurisdictions The beauty of this research process is that it can be geared toward any database. As long as the user can maneuver the database to find relevant secondary sources, he or she will be able to fulfill the first step of the research process and so on. If students use this research process to keep their research strategic and organized, they should fee...
Read more