Where should I look...

Today, Chris Nolan paid us a visit in our class. He mainly talked about the differences about the variety of search engines at our availability through the internet. By seeing so many of them everywhere, it's no wonder people get confused about the place where they should be looking for the information they need.

Before the class we had today, my mind could be represented as the picture shown. Nothing made sense! The only place I would look for everything was Google.

In this lecture I learned many different things, especially the difference between the search engines which categorize their information based on popularity and on scholarly sources.

Most of the search engines, that are not scholarly, are usually based on the frequency the key words you typed in appear in the page, links it has, reliability, and popularity. Another aspect that the search engines work by is the fact that they eliminate words such as: I, and, or, the, from what you type in the search bar.

I learned what makes scholarly search engines different from the normal search engines we usually use on our everyday life. But what really surprised me was the fact the one key factor of the order in which the sources are presented is the order of the words put in the search bar. I always thought that no matter what order you typed in the words, the result would be the same. Apparently it is not so.

Thanks Chris Nolan for a very informative lecture!

The right of copying... Copyright

In the visit we had from Diane Graves, the University Librarian, on Tuesday, I learned different aspects about what copyright entails. From the subjects she mentioned, the fact that impressed me the most was the time spam copyright has on works. I had no idea that I wouldn’t be able to officially copy Nemo for another 89 years!!
Even so, another matter that really was contradictory in my mind was the copyright case of “Orphan works”. If there isn’t a rightful owner to claim their work, then why even bother? Any way the copyright industry might be more directed for big companies trying to protect their fixed income than on articles. But probably there is more to a copyright license than the protection of someone’s salary. Why are “Orphan works” copyrighted when there is no possibility that the author might be prejudiced by copying the work? Well, the answer to this question is to meet their objectives. One of the purposes of copyright is to promote innovation and creativity. This way other artists will find the way around their problem on their own instead of depending on someone else’s work. This is my final side on the subject because this way there will be more possibilities and “Orphan Works” can still be used abiding by the “Fair Use” Policy.