S11189180 I Winedres Sendito I UU100A LEARNING JOURNEY

e-Portfolio 1 covers topics from topic 2 part A and B. This tasked devised me to use search strategies and search techniques to find the appropriate resources using various techniques like limiters and phrase searching to find information regarding the safety and efficacy about the Covid-19 vaccine. Fundamentally the Activity comprises of the research skills I have acquired and applying it to the topic of Covid-19 vaccines and by finding resources on different variation of source such as Wikipedia, Scholarly article and a blog.

 Topic 2 introduced a lot of key concepts such as search strategies which taught me how to effectively and efficiently locate information needed for my research which I applied on e-Portfolio 1 this includes identifying focus  and topic words or analyzing the research question. This  goes hand in hand with the use of search techniques  that efficiently helps locate information  that I needed for my research on Covid-19:Safety and Efficacy on this activity, some search techniques I used in this portfolio are:

• Boolean operators- Boolean operator (AND) is set by default in google, other operators that can be used are OR that widens your keywords or NOT that narrows it by limiting the results. This helped me combine keywords in my research.
• Phrase-searching-Phrase searching was very useful in my activity as it enabled me to search certain words that needed to appear in the article or webpage that I needed.(eg : "COVID-19 Vaccine")
• Truncation-Truncation enabled me to extend the possibilities of a  word and results of my research this was most used in my search strategy for the word effic* as it can have a lot of variations like efficiency 
• Wildcards-Wild cards enabled me to search a wider variation for my topic by using the character (*) 
• Limiters-Limiters was very helpful in this activity as it helped me limit the results to certain domains /websites like Wikipedia or domain .blog by using the "site:" limiter.
• Field searching- Field searching helps locate word in a certain field, I didn't get  the chance to use this technique as i felt that i have sufficient results, but would recommend to use this in future assessments. 

Devising search strategies and applying search techniques enhanced my research skills as by applying both of these elements I was able to narrow down my search to the point that all information that came our from my search were relevant information that  I can use  in my research. This is because of the use of the search techniques I used above that sorted out the results of my search to the specific terms that I wanted.

Topic 2 also introduced concepts such as advanced searching which helped further enhance the results and by making it more easier to use search strategies as it does it for you, you just need to fill in  information. Certain domains like Google books or Google scholar that helps you sort out the information you want to either only scholarly articles or books. Meta search that compiles search result from different search engines such as google/bing by using a website like dogpile.com, As different search engines produce different results. All of these are helpful strategies in researching to bring out the best results.

Wikipedia plays a big role in doing research and provides a lot of information about topics such as Covid-19.A Wikipedia article gives broad information about a topic and gives you a broad understanding(eg. background, definition) about the topic you're  research is based on (based on personal experience). 

While Wikipedia plays a big role in a research ,I do not think its a suitable or reliable resource to be used as the main resource that a research topic should be referenced on. This is because due to a number of reasons, Firstly it can be edited  by anyone at anytime the information given could be incomplete or wrong. This means that the information from Wikipedia may lack Authority that a certain expert in the field of topic may have(eg. can be edited by a high-school student instead of a Professor in that field). Therefore while it may be very useful it is not very reliable or trustworthy enough to be cited as a reference.

E-portfolio 2 is an enjoyable activity covering a wide topic and different skill-sets or techniques learned in topics 2,3 and 4.

These include dissecting techniques used in a search term, utilizing different database such as ProQuest or the USP-Library  and using different search options such as basic search and advanced search. Overall e-Portfolio 2  showcases whats the most effective search techniques and using this information to form your very own search technique that's the most efficient and effective way to  locate information needed.These include using reference tools such as end-note  to automatically sort out your references for you.

During the making of this activity I experienced and learnt different things and operations as i explored databases and search engines in the inter web.

One of the difficulties I tackled in making this e-portfolio activity was importing reference or citation form google scholar to end-note. It was frustrating as google scholar does not have a direct connection with end note unlike ProQuest,Despite this it was rewarding learning how to import references to end-note.

The key thing i learned during the making of this was the power of the amount of information you know about a resource or a topic,given enough information you could just use field searching or limiters to find  precise information or resource that you need. The field codes differs in databases or search engines for example in google search engine to find words exactly on the title of the resource you use "allintitle:" while in ProQuest database it is just "ti(phrase)",which could be a bit of a difficulty.

This can be overcome with using the search option Advanced Search this search option is very precise given you feed it enough information about the resource or topic you want to locate.It is also very user friendly in the databases i used such as USP-library and ProQuest you need little to no knowledge in search techniques to use this option. Therefore making it the most effective and efficient search option in my experience.

The most  effective strategy in constructing a search strategy to locate information is to field searching and limiters such as "allintitle" or "ab" as it narrows the results down drastically making it very precise. This is with conjunction of using the right keywords and the use of phrase search.If  you want to gain more understanding or knowledge about your research topics wildcard or truncation is  great operator to use in this case. 

Despite this, the most effective and efficient way to find a resource is to used the advanced search option if the database or search engine has one. With this you save hassle of putting in search operators and you will have more options on how you want to sort out the information that they will gather for you.Its user friendly interface and precise results makes it the best option or strategy in searching for a resource in my experience.

The library of Congress classification System is a way to sort books that are of the same  topics or subjects together, this is done by assigning call numbers to each different books. library  of congress  congress often are alpha numeric i.e. letters and numbers. , while other classifications like Dewey numerical classification are numeric.

Unfortunately USP- Rarotonga does not have its own library therefore it has no library classification.