Friday, January 25, 2013

Unit 3: Exploring Topics

I choose the topic Privacy and used the Gale Virtual Library and Wikipedia to research it further. I came up with the following twenty keywords related to privacy:
  • Country
  • Industry
  • Law
  • Hippocratic Oath
  • Technology
  • Ethics
  • Bedroom Communities
  • Boundaries
  • Religion
  • Civil Disobedience
  • Family
  • Patriot Act
  • Homeland Security
  • Doctor-Patient Confidentiality
  • Parameters
  • Social Media
  • Grocery Cards
  • Roe v. Wade
  • Do Not Call Registries
  • College Transcripts
In the future I would like to take the time to read more about privacy as described in this article:
Petronio, Sandra. "Privacy." Encyclopedia of Human Relationships. Ed. Harry T. Reis and Susan Sprecher. Vol. 3. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2009. 1292-1295. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 23 Jan. 2013.

I searched Wikipedia to see what information they had about privacy, the citation for that article is: Wikipedia contributors. "Privacy." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 27 Dec. 2012. Web. 23 Jan. 2013.
Here are the 3 research questions I came up with related to privacy:
  1. How can we protect our privacy in a digital world?
  2. When does the Patriot Act cross the line between protecting citizens and taking away their rights?
  3. How can businesses protect their industry secrets when employees leave the company?
This was a very enjoyable unit for me. I have always struggled to come up with topics that are both interesting to me and would hopefully be interesting to my reader. I like using the GVRL and Wikipedia to come up with keywords related to a very broad topic. Just coming up with a lot of keywords make coming up with the three research questions very easy to do. I know I could have come up with at least a few more without breaking a sweat.

Though Wikipedia is not a reputable source it can still be effective for brainstorming or for common knowledge information. The Gale Virtual Reference Library is a great resource for full scholarly references. I have been using ProQuest and EBSCOhost for the last couple years. I'm not sure what the differences between the GVRL and the other databases I"ve been using are, but they all seem like very useful databases.
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1 comment:

  1. abullockJanuary 27, 2013 at 2:08 PM

    Hi, Christina:

    GVRL is a good place to get reliable, credible information on a topic and can be used as a starting point to help determine keywords/topics that you will use to search ProQuest or Academic Search Premier for articles. It provides understandable background on topics and can add to your understanding. Wikipedia can be useful and an okay place to start to gather information and learn about your topic, however, I find GVRL articles more concise and easy to read.

    Your questions are interesting and relevant to your topic. We'll be using the questions as we move forward and revise and expand as needed. Thank you for your efforts.

    Cheers,
    Andrea

    ReplyDelete

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