The History of Medicine in Western Society

Internet searching & other skills

Searching the internet

In the "research guidance" area of this web site, I have provided information on how to locate references to primary and secondary materials through the UI Library system and via selected sites on the World Wide Web. The temptation to use Google and other search engines (Yahoo, MSN Search) is strong, however, especially when just getting started on a research topic or simply to find out more about something.

But how good are your searching skills when using these broad search engines and a few key words? And how good are you at assessing whether or not the content displayed is at all reliable? The World Wide Web is fun because it is so open-ended and democratic. Anyone can post just about anything, including poor, misleading or simply fraudulent information. Finding web sites is not the same as finding digital copies of books or journal articles that are electronic versions of printed material that has been through peer review!

Colin Gordon, a professor in the UI History Department, provided me with the URL to an excellent on-line site for developing search skills. The Beaumont Library at the University of South Carolina has created Bare Bones 101: A Basic Tutorial on Searching the Web. See lesson 5, Evaluating Web Pages, for guidance on the major steps to take to assess a site's authorship, content and stability. John Henderson's site at Cornell University is a bit less stuffy and academic, while providing good advice on evaluating web sites. He provides some great examples of how often distorted "facts" multiply through the web. He calls his site ICYouSee: T is for Thinking.

If you still think that a page with good design, identified with a credible looking institution, and containing no advertising probably has reliable information, then take a critical look at this important medical development.

Writing -- the process

Writing is hard. All serious writers know this. It is also very rewarding. One critical factor in learning to write well is to read, and to read well written texts. Read the New York Times in addition to (or instead of) a local paper. Read excellent work written for an educated, general audience in your field. Another critical factor in learning to write well is to write, get critiqued, write again, develop a self-critical (but not self-defeating) eye, and write some more. Writing a history paper is different from writing a newspaper article or a laboratory report, as well. There are a number of resources available to help you plan and write a history paper, along with sites and books that can help with becoming a better writer.

The History Writing Center is an excellent resource, but to get the most out of the help provided there you need to plan in advance. Contact the Center for an appointment. Plan to have one of the consultants look at a draft with enough time for you to make revisions before the paper is due.

University of Iowa Writing Center, in 100 EPB, is also very very helpful. Consult the staff early on in your project, however! The web site has links to sites that the staff has approved for help with grammar and style.

How to write a history paper

Many professors have prepared sound advice on how to write a history paper, and their wisdom can supplement the discussion I provide in the "Research Paper" handout for the course. Here are some of the ones that I think cover the main points particularly well.

• How to Write a Good History Paper from the History Department of Emory University.
• History. This is a general guide to historical thinking from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This entire web site has excellent advice (that is, I agree with it!) for reading and writing in history, including discussion of essay exams and research papers.
• How to Write a Medical History Paper. Faculty in the Department of Medical History at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences have prepared sound advice on writing a paper. The advice about sources is somewhat dated; many of the indices mentioned are now on-line (see Research guidance). There are references to the specific holdings of the USU collections, but the UI has a number of the sources mentioned. The sections on "How to Do Your Research" and "How to Write the Essay" have solid recommendations for how to proceed if you are feeling lost.

Plagiarism: short cuts, bad habits, a culture of cut-and-paste -- and an academic offense.

Copying what someone else has written instead of putting the ideas, facts and narrative into your own words is wrong. Sometimes people plagiarize out of laziness, or because "I have always done this and it was okay." Some students have told me that because they see web sites where text is copied from other sites over and over again, well, that makes copying "okay." At other times, students have said that because they cannot write as well as the author, they have to copy. "How can I say it any differently?" they have asked me. The answer is easy, although it can seem to be really hard if a student has not had enough work with writing: step away from the source and put what you have read into your own words. Don't look at the source text. Practice this over and over again.

Finally, look into yourself and ask "have I done the best I possibly can to honestly use my own words? Am I copying?" Have you done the work, or are you pretending to have done the work? When you copy from a printed source, or use copy-and-paste from web pages and digital texts, you have not done the work.

I recommend these sites for learning more about plagiarism, especially for seeing examples:

• "Plagiarism, Trust and Fraud." This is a thoughtful essay by Tom Rocklin, former Director of the UI Center for Teaching and now Associate Provost.
• The OWL at Purdue University (an on-line writing lab has a fairly good discussion of how to use sources and to avoid plagiarism. The pages on avoiding plagiarism have been written for students. It has four parts: (1) Overview; (2) Is it Plagiarism Yet? (3) Safe Practices, with advice on how to take notes and review material when writing; and (4) Safe Practices: An Exercise. The last part lets you test how well you understand and recognize plagiarism.
• Academic Dishonesty -- Plagiarism. This site, at Oregon State University, gives a text and then provides examples of appropriate quotation and paraphrasing and examples of plagiarism.

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