Community Media [Jankowski]

Searching for specific details on IndyMedia on various search engines around the world, as a case for general academic search strategies, was the basis of a second session by Nick Jankowski.  The session was informal, and led to alot of discussion, therefore I did not take a considerable amount of notes.

Strategies:
Databases: Web Of Science, Lexis Nexis (subscription), Sociological Abstracts; JSTORE, search for topic + PDF in google.com search query

With regard to learning how to better search for material, some suggestions were:

• Consult a Senior Librarian
• Learn how to search specific databases
• Learn what databases are the top ones for your topic/discipline
• Look at researchers and research institutions in your topic/discipline 

I found Nick's presentation on an exploratory study of IndyMedia websites interesting for an entirely different reason however.  That is, I can consider the way he explored the data when exploring genealogical websites in my PhD. 

• Qualitative description of websites
        - Editorial policy?
        - Publishing frequency?
        - Table that summaries the features
                - Multimedia
                - Interactive
                - Editorial policy
                - Special features
• Quantitative content analysis of websites