Free PDF Search Engine Open Access in Australia – Australasian Open Access Strategy Group Australian institutions with Open Access mandates, policies or statements Australian funding body open access policies Page last updated 28 October 2015 Like this: Like Loading... Twitter Search Twitter , a popular micro-blogging platform that boasts millions of users, is a great way to find content that other people are talking about on the Web. Here are seven search tools you can use for a more accurate and extensive Twitter search. 1. Topsy Topsy is a a search engine that follows conversations around the Web based on a Twitter springboard of over 30 million users and what they're talking about. 2. Bing Tweets, part of Microsoft's Bing search engine, is a search utility that will search Twitter for you and post your results alongside related Bing search results, making it easy to investigate a topic further. 3. Twitter Search offers some pretty decent search tools that you can use to narrow down what you're looking for; they also follow trending topics so you can see what's hot fast. 4. Twitter can be overwhelming simply because there's so much information traded back and forth. 5.
theconversation Australia spends more than $30 billion a year on projects which produce “grey literature” - documents which are produced by government departments, academic institutions, private companies and more. But despite all this effort, Australia lacks a standardised mechanism to curate and freely distribute grey literature. There has never been a better time, than right now, to investigate opportunities into improving our country’s memory. Government agencies allocate billions of dollars, each year, to research projects and programs. These activities produce research papers, conference papers and other forms of grey literature. Examples of these agencies include The Australian Research Council and The National Health and Medical Research Council. Students in the higher education sector also produce high quality grey literature in the form of Theses and Dissertations. The importance of grey literature The inability to find information quickly impacts innovation and stunts collaboration.
Make Your Web Searches Better With These Ten Tips Ever been frustrated with your web search results? We've all been there! Fortunately, there are several tricks you can use to search better and get more relevant results. Searching the web more effectively doesn't really take much effort. Below are some tried and true web search techniques that work with virtually any search engine, along with a few basic web search skills you need to have for truly successful web searches. You can use a mobile search engine to browse the web from your phone or tablet, and some of these tips work with those, too. Be Specific The more relevant words you use in your search, the more successful your results will be. For example, entering coffee when trying to find coffee shops in Michigan would provide far too many unnecessary results. However, modifying it slightly to include the type of coffee or cat you want and the specific location or color you're looking for, is usually enough to provide the results you're after. Use Quotes to Search for a Phrase
The Best Research and Reference Sites Online Whether you're looking for the average rainfall in the Amazon rainforest, researching Roman history, or just having fun learning to find information, you'll get some great help using my list of the best research and reference sites on the Web. Types of Reference Sites There are generally two types of reference sites. The first consist of specialized Web sites maintained by subject experts, who will provide detailed and specific responses to your questions. The second are run by generalists (often reference librarians) who don't necessarily answer your question but point you to the best resources for conducting your own search. Which Kind Of Reference Site Is Best? Which type of these resources you choose depends on what your question is. Find and Ask An Expert Via Search Engines To find your own expert in a specific category, try the following search string at Google or any other search engine: "expert+subject" (substitute your own keyword for "subject") Find a Librarian Refdesk.com.
Releases Horizon Project Strategic Brief on Digital Literacy A new report, supported by Adobe, aims to establish a shared vision of digital literacy and serve as a call to action for higher education leaders across the United States. The New Media Consortium (NMC) has released Digital Literacy: An NMC Horizon Project Strategic Brief in conjunction with the 2016 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference. Commissioned by Adobe, the special report explores the advancement of digital literacy, which is sparking new thinking in higher education about how to best prepare students for the demands of the global technological economy. This project was launched because there is a lack of consensus across the field about how to define digital literacy and implement effective programs. A survey was disseminated throughout the NMC community of higher education leaders and practitioners to understand how digital literacy initiatives are impacting their campuses. > Download the report (PDF)
Digital Skills Is Not The Same As Digital Literacy – FINDING HEROES Digital skills is following a step by step process of creating an email account. Digital literacy is recognising spam, why it is being sent and understanding how email providers use filters to minimise potential harm. Digital skills is knowing how to use Microsoft Word. Digital skills is showing someone how to borrow ebooks. Digital skills is knowing how to use Facebook. Digital skills is showing someone how to use a database. Library staff spend a lot of time helping their community gain digital skills but how much time do we really spend helping them become digitally literate? And to add a layer of complexity onto that last question – when it comes to digital literacy, there is no one size fits all. For example, not everyone who borrows ebooks needs to know why some titles aren’t available for borrowing in New Zealand. Being digitally literate in a public library will also require different capabilities, aptitudes and attitudes to those expected in a higher education library.