2. SOCIAL NETWORKS AS RESEARCH
TOOLS?
“The Strength of Weak Ties”:
Less overlap means a wider
base of people/knowledge
Exponential growth: asking
your friends to ask their
friends results in a far wider
circle of possible sources
Fast response time: 24-hour
global service
3. SOMETIMES IT WORKS, SOMETIMES IT
DOESN’T
Filters created by you or by
the network can inhibit the
reach of your message:
So think about how you use
social media: are all your
Facebook friends just like you?
What’s “authoritative” when
you crowdsource an answer?
(The crowd won’t always be
right)
Still, it can often open you up
to new sources and/or new
ways of thinking about your
problem
4. SMART CLOUD COMPUTING
Infrastructure as a Service
(IaaS)
The use of remote servers and
storage over a network
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
The use of remote server
systems over a network
Software as a Service
(SaaS)
The use of applications over a
network
5. CLOUD COMPUTING IN RESEARCH
How is it useful? Suggestions
Sync notes and resources Know where your data is: on
computers, peripherals, or in
across devices, add material the cloud
remotely or from various Use services which sync
locations between devices, or devices
and the cloud
Collaboration, both in real-
Experiment with new cloud-
time and asynchronously based services!
Web-based platforms are not Each file you create should
generally operating-system- have at least two homes: one
specific in the cloud, one on a device,
at minimum
6. Using Academic
Databases
• Probably the best starting point
for any research project
• Know where they are on your
library’s web site
• Start with a larger/broader/more
general database, then narrow it
down
• Keyword searching vs. Boolean
searching: your database could
use either
