Project Evaluation

My searching project was very enlightening to me. I’ve been interested in cybersecurity and privacy issues for a while – ever since I began reading about the work of Edward Snowden to expose privacy violations within our government – and I was very interested to see what I could learn about this controversial and ever evolving topic. Searching through the vastly different databases has shown me how wide reaching this topic can be and how many different disciplines are affected by the need for online security infrastructure. I was very surprised to find that these searches lead me to investigating topics like cyberpsychology – an up and coming field centered on how we interact with the world online – and software standardization.

Searching so many different databases shows that you never really know what you will find in these unique databases. For example, I wasn’t sure what to search in PsycInfo and ended up learning about the previously mentioned field of cyberpsychology. This project put into my arsenal of tools many new databases that I would not have spent much time working with. Now I know how to search in these databases if or when I received a specialized question. Learning more about how to manipulate limiters was also an important element of this course for me. While I always knew they were there, practice makes perfect and having to search so many databases, each with their own set of unique limiters and abilities, really made me aware of what exactly each limiter was doing and how it was affecting my search. 

Social Media Searching

Social media search is a great way to see what is being said about your topic in real time. Social Mention is a social media search engine that searches blogs, social media mentions, images, comments and news articles. It also ranks the “sentiment” of the mentions and how often a topic is being discussed. It is an excellent tool to gauge public interest in your topic. The search interface is not complicated, so I simply searched “cybersecurity” and browsed the various tweets, blogs and mentions that were pulled for the topic.

What I Learned

I honestly cannot say that I learned much about my topic from this search. While the results were interesting, especially the information about the “sentiment” of the public towards the topic of cybersecurity, I did not see any hard facts about cybersecurity that stuck out to me. When we consider one of the earlier articles that I read on the subject of social media research however, the worth of such a tool becomes more clear. A researcher might be able to use this tool to determine how often a corporate entity is mentioned or how much information is being divulged about a company through social media.

The most helpful thing I learned about searching in this database is to make sure of the "Sort By" and "Results" drop down menus at the top of your list of results. If you're looking for up to the minute updates, the "Results" menu will give you updates only from the last couple of hours to days, which can be useful if you are researching a fast changing topic.

Reflections

Social Mention is a quick way to get an idea of what is going on with your topic right that minute. For more popular topics, this tool may be more useful. For example, if you wanted to know how the public perceives a certain public figure, you would be able to see Social Mention’s take on their opinion about the piece. I was especially curious about the “passion” element that was measured, which purported to show how likely a person talking about the topic will talk about the subject again. 

Google Image Search

In the spirit of the excellent graphics from the Pew Research Institute in my previous search, I decided to search for “cybersecurity infographics” in Google Images. Because of the very theoretical nature of my topic, searching simply for “cybersecurity” yielded some very boring pictures of computers with locks around them and Matrix-esque images of “cyberspace”. Adding the term “infographic” to my search resulted in much better results that really teach why to invest in cybersecurity and how to ensure the safety of personal and corporate data. Just to test it out, I also filtered my search by my favorite color – blue! The image I selected is from the Silicon Valley Bank and provided detailed statistics about cybersecurity and tech companies.

What I Learned

I was shocked to learn that only 8% of the surveyed companies were using some sort of security software to protect their data. IT professionals that I have worked with previously have always made it sound like that was a standard practice.

Before this course, I had no idea that there were search tools for the Google Image Search.  The Usage Rights feature is extremely helpful, especially if you are helping a patron to decided which images are available for them to use in a classroom setting or for a personal project. 

Reflection

As usual, Google produces useful, on point results for my query. I had a great time messing around with the search tools to see how each different element changed my search results. As I said before, no one has ever pointed these tools out to me before and I am looking forward to sharing these tips with patrons and colleagues. 

Statistical Database Search

I used the opportunity to search a stats database to show how important and valuable good cybersecurity policy is by searching for information on how many people are affected by poor security online. I searched the Pew Research Institute for the term “identity theft”.  I was able to find a study on the number of people who experienced identity theft and information about the types of internet users who are most likely to have “negative” experience online related to privacy and their reputation.

What I Learned

I learned that 1 in 5 internet users experiences some form of identity theft, with internet users from lower income brackets experiencing the most negative attacks on their personal information and online reputation.

I did not really learn anything about searching from this particular database because the search was so limited and simple, but I do recommend reading through all your results (or at least the first page worth of results) when searching on this website. Sometimes the titles of documents can be a bit unimpressive but the summary will show that they are deeply relevant to your topic.

Reflection

The Pew Research Institute was a great choice for this search and I think it would be very useful to other people looking for statistical information, primarily because the results were so easy to read and understand. With statistics and numerical information, I always find myself getting in over my head – having to reread information in order to understand the sometimes higher level statistical information I have found. However, the Pew reports were easy to understand with clearly labeled illustrations and helpful bullet points that made the information digestible. 

LexisNexis

LexisNexis is a popular database, frequently used by those in the legal field. Prior to starting my MLIS degree, I worked as a case manager/paralegal for a large plaintiff’s law firm and we were often using Lexis Nexis to access information relevant to our cases.

For this search, I decided to search only for “cybersecurity” hits that were published in the last year. I also decided to remove “Company Profiles”, as those hits had not been useful to me in previous LexisNexis searches I have done with previous employers. One the results page, I decided to further limit my search to the industry “Information Security & Privacy”.

The article I found was a short news clip that was similar in topic to the article that I found through DIALOG – “Technology: Dissecting The First Version of the NIST’s Cybersecurity Framework”.

What I Learned

I learned today that NIST – the National Institute of Standards and Technology – does not create standards that are required by law. While they are recommendations for best practices and sometimes lead to regulations, companies are not required by law to meet these standards. However, their publications are influential within the industry.

Similar to DIALOG, I recommend limiting your search to a specific industry if possible. It made my results much more targeted and more relevant to the type of information I was seeking. Some topics do not lend themselves well to this process, but cybersecurity definitely fell comfortably under "information security".

Reflection

In my previous work as a paralegal for a major plaintiff’s law firm, I used LexisNexis daily and there is truly nothing like it for searching for case summaries and case law. The indexing on court cases (particularly the ability to search cases by subject) found in LexisNexis is far superior to other products on the market (for example, WestLaw) and I highly recommend LexisNexis as the first stop for any legal searches that need to be done. However, I find LexisNexis to be much slower than other databases we have used and not as intuitive. I would hesitate to put a user with little experience searching databases to work with LexisNexis because the number of results returned is so high and limiting your results takes practice. In general, I would say that I prefer other databases interfaces (such as JSTOR’s or the various ProQuest databases) over that of LexisNexis, especially for materials such as articles that are archived in other databases.