CPS Online Library Research Guide (UNH Manchester Library): Other Sources of Information

Institutional Repositories

From: Institutional Repositories: Hidden Treasures
by Miriam A. Drake • Professor • Emerita Library • Internet Librarian  (Vol. 12 No. 5 — May 2004)

"The world's universities, museums, governments, and other organizations house treasures that have been hidden in archives, basements, attics, print formats, and a variety of storage devices. These treasures encompass scientific, technological, cultural, artistic, and historical materials generally unavailable to searchers and the public. Institutional repositories are now being created to manage, preserve, and maintain the digital assets, intellectual output, and histories of institutions. Librarians are taking leadership roles in planning and building these repositories, fulfilling their roles as experts in collecting, describing, preserving, and providing stewardship for documents and digital information.

• Read the Full Article " Institutional Repositories: Hidden Treasures"

Institutional repositories can be a wonderful source of information, including peer-reviewed articles, produced by the faculty at that institution.

Open Access Repositories

• These repositories may hold content that is scholarly or resources valuable to the group
• Resources may be shared but some copyright guidelines still apply – read the fine print
• The repositories will differ in terms of how they are organized, and how individual resources are accessed
• Some commercial repositories organize individual institutional repositories into a meta-repository that is searchable – you are searching across multiple institutional repositories
• There may be some overlap between the GSC Discovery Service and a large repository, but a recommendation is to always search the GSC Discovery Service first

Repositories

• OpenDOAR : Directory of world-wide open access repositories, organized by country
• Social Science Resource Network: Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is composed of a number of specialized research networks in the social sciences.
• Digital Commons Network: brings together scholarship from hundreds of universities and colleges, providing open access to peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work. This constantly growing body of publications is curated by university librarians and their supporting institutions, and represents thousands of disciplines and subject areas.
• SPARC Comprehensive Lists of Repositories

Repository 66 : Map of Open Access Repositories

Authentication

Source:

The first step is to try and determine whether the source is trustworthy starting with the following criteria:

• Identification: Does the source provide a name, logo, bio, description, link to official website or to other social media channels, or any sort of identification information? Would searching Google for this source provide more information about it?
• Number of Posts/Tweets: The bigger the number of posts/tweets the better, it provides a digital trace to check for bias, and validity of information provided, as well as the types of posts - intelligible, exaggerated, inconsistent, etc.
• Number of Followers/Likes: Does the source have a large number of followers or likes? If there are only a few, are any of the followers known and credible sources?

• Retweets/Shares: Do the source's posts/tweets get shared/retweeted by known and credible sources?
• Location: Can the source be geographically located? Are the events that this source posts about close in distance to its location? Try to find out during which periods of the day/night the source posts/tweets the most. This may provide an indication as to the source’s time zone.
• Timing: Is the source posting or tweeting in real time? are there any significant delays or any unusual aspects related to the timing of the posts?
• Social Authentication: Use your own social network–Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn–to find out if anyone in your network know about the source’s reliability.
• Media Authentication: Check if the source posts are quoted by trusted media outlines
• Engage the Source: Reply or send a message to the source asking for more information.

Content

If the steps above did not lead to a conclusion, try triangulating the content following the steps below:

• Triangulation:Are other sources reporting on the event you are investigating?  The more independent witnesses you can get information from the better and the less critical the need for identity authentication.
• Origins: Can the original source be identified and authenticated? If the original source is found, does the time/date of the original report make sense given the situation?
• Social Authentication: Ask members of your own social network whether the post in question is being shared/tweeted by other sources.
• Language: If the language used is too official, such as “breaking news”, “urgent”, “confirmed” etc., it needs to be scrutinized.
• Pictures: Does the photo provide any clues about the location where it was taken based on buildings, signs, cars, etc., in the background? same tip applies to posts with videos.
• Follow up: If you have contacts in the geographic area of interest, then you could ask them to follow up directly/in-person to confirm the validity of the information.

Information in this section are based on Meier's article How to Verify Social Media Content: Some Tips and Tricks on Information Forensics: http://irevolution.net/2011/06/21/information-forensics/

Accuracy Checklist

The great amount of information on social media makes it difficult to determine which of the information is accurate and authentic and which is not. The below checklist provides a number of questions to start with:

• Location of the Source: Are they in the place they are tweeting or posting about?
• Network: Who is in their network and who follows them? Do I know this account?
• Content: Can the information be corroborated from other sources?
• Contextual Updates: Do they usually post or tweet on this topic? If so, what did past or updated posts say? Do they fill in more details?
• Age: What is the age of the account in question? Be wary of recently created accounts.
• Reliability: Is the source of information reliable?

Checklist taken from Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins: http://guides.library.jhu.edu/c.php?g=202581&p=1335031