Efficiency of Online vs Academic Sources - Coursework Example

1. Introduction This paper will look into the effectiveness of online sources as opposed to academic sources like books and journals; how each can be used and how efficient each one is in delivering to the user his required information. 2 Title and author of your book. 2.1 How was the book located The book was found by using the keywords industrial revolution in the library database. 2.2 Summary The Industrial revolution, as seen from the eye of Hobsbawn in ‘Industry and Empire’ revolved around the production of cotton. It became the soul reason for the expansion and growth of many cities, the most prominent being Manchester which in only a span of 70 years saw more than 900 per cent population growth. With the swelling population, the industries also transformed from small plants to enormous operations. Cotton was far from the only good that was being manufactured in droves, it was however, seen as the “pacemaker of industrial change” (Hobsbon, ,p. 34). Industrialization became the reason many settlements were created, those same settlements can be seen as large urban cities today. Industries owned by the working class became more prominent, along with all kinds of other factories. Cotton industry subsequently went onto grow into diversity. There were silk products, wool came into view and the domestic cotton industry got a boom during the 1700 when a ban was placed on imports. By 1770 over 90 per cent of all cotton exports were being fed to the colonial markets that existed under the British rule. While it was planted outside of Europe, the production took place inside it and hence the profits went to them as well. Technology also advanced and machinery was upgraded, things like weaving came into play as the situation changed. Several small changes are what collectively made up the industrial revolution. Hobson attributed the advances during the industrial revolution in part to the slavery, colonialism and the hold Europe had over the world. 3. http://www.umassd.edu/ir/ 3.1 This was one of the first results I found when I googled the key words: industrial revolution. The search engine for google is extremely efficient and turned over around 6,580,000 hits in 0.38 seconds only. The results ranged from simple web pages, to book results on books.google.com and simple articles and papers other students had done on the subject. The search engine page at first glance seemed to be a miracle because of the amount of material it provided. Google.com as a search engine was very effective at bringing out results but the relevancy of these results is what I have issues with. You can find just about anything you want to find through google.com but you need to spend a good amount of time getting to the link that’s right for you. . I did not want to go through books.google.com and there were several entries from that side of google alone. Other than that several of the pages had very little detail. One or two were meant specifically for children to understand the industrial revolution. For a more comprehensive look at the subject anyone, and not just me, would have to sift through a number of the search result pages before they found something that was relevant to their topic. 3.1 The website says very little about the topic, it only gives a brief overview of 3.2 The site is a part of the Dartmouth circle, UMASS in particular and has been created for a seminar. It gives out general information about the seminar that was held for the given topic. 3.3 All the sources that are used on the site have a proper source because it was for a seminar on the university. However, it did not contain as much information as one would need and its okay if you just want a brief overview of the subject but the very first page does not give you any detail. In terms of using the book against this it I would probably pick the book because it was more comprehensive and had much better detail on the subject. 3.4 The information is extremely reliable because it is meant to give researchers and students an insight into the subject and has been thoroughly researched by the teacher who had to give the seminar. I can quote it as a proper source in a paper or work that I decide to undertake as it had credibility unlike most of the sites on the internet that do not provide sources or references as to the details that they have placed on their sites. 4 http://www.sparknotes.com/history/european/1848/section1.html The other search engine I made use of was Bing which is a subsidiary of msn.com and it returned more results than Google able to. I had a choice of over 25,600,000 different web pages which were given to me as a result of searching for the ‘industrial revolution’ as a keyword. In terms of results, Bing was able to pull out more than twice the amount that Google found. I found the site http://www.sparknotes.com/history/european/1848/section1.html useful from Bing. The problem with both the search engines is that they more or less repeated their results. What I found on Bing was somewhat similar to the results I had received on Google. With the exception that Bing provided more web pages for me to sort through, the two were almost similar. 4.1 The page starts off by talking about the definition of industrial revolution. It seems to take a very generalised view of the phenomenon and then dives into the nature of the industrial revolution and outlines the period in which there was tremendous growth seen. It specifically talks about the revolution in Britain and looks at the role of the Dutch and the expansion of trade and the fostering of the money economy. This is before it takes a look at the worldwide effects of the industrial revolution and outlines the effects of the entire process in summation. It also cites a decent bibliography as references. 4.2 Sparknotes is a proper educational site that only publishes articles and pieces from published sources. There are several thousands of references that can be used and each one comes with pictures and summaries so that people can make quick decisions as to whether or not something is useful for them or not. For proper credible information, this is a good website. It is owned, managed and maintained by HighBeam research. It is basically for educational use and has been set up to aid students in their assignments and research. 4.3 This would be a good source for an IS1103 researcher because it only makes use of certified articles and pieces that are already in print in some magazine, journal or book. Therefore the information that they provide is extremely reliable. 4.4 The site only gives the user three options on reaching his topic i.e. a piece from the oxford university press, the world encyclopaedia and the Columbia encyclopaedia. The result although useful is no where near as comprehensive as Wikipedia or Hobson has been. If I had simply wanted a small summary of the events it would have been alright but looking into the depth of the issue is not possible with just this one link. There are links to several articles provided within the page, however, in itself the information present there is not nearly enough. 5. Conclusion Books talk about specifics and provide only the information that the chapter states, where as websites can at times add in a lot of information that you do not need. As an academic researcher if one know of a theory or works by an author or researcher then he can look up that specific theory or research and study it however he wants to. Websites however, are a compilation of information and normally are not based on research or extensive study hence they aren’t as effective as a book maybe. They do, however, make things easier with pictures and easy to read information. If the subject is compartmentalised then there is no reason for the reader to keep reading the whole web page and instead he can just skip the parts he does not need. References http://www.sparknotes.com/history/european/1848/section1.html http://www.umassd.edu/ir/ Appendix Read More