Goals
- File naming and document documentation
- Learn how to use Google drive, set up folder, share folders and documents, move things between Word and google docs
- Learn what a bibliographic manager is, what Zotero is, how to use it.
- Create a document with inline references/citations and an automatically formulated bibliography
- Join Google classroom
Your Portfolio on Google Drive and Google Classroom
TO GET STARTED: On your Google Drive, create a folder called soc091 or ppol100. Inside this folder create a folder called Portfolio-Lname-Fname-soc091-2016 (substitute your last name for Lname and your first name for Fname; substitute ppol100 for soc091 if you're registered for PPOL). Move any portfolio files you have already submitted into this folder.
Naming Files and Folders
It is not hard to suddenly have 25,000 files on your computer. Like any filing system, your mountain of digital files is only as useful as it is easy to find what you need when you need it. Just remembering where you put it or what you called it will not suffice in the long run.
There comes a moment in any bit of digital work when you remember you should save your document. THIS is the moment at which you should follow a protocol. Saving it as "DOC1.docx" or "Worksheet4.xslx" is not smart. Neither is calling it "sociology assignment 2."
Some things to consider:
- you spend time thinking up a file name
- you spend time figuring out what folder to put it in or what to call a folder
- you spend time later trying to remember both of these
- you will share some files with colleagues
- colleagues will share files with you
- you will submit some files to instructors
- other students will submit files to the same instructors for the same assignments
- you will have similar files with similar names in different folders/directories (until they find themselves in the same folder)
- you will often look at lists of file names while looking for one
Principles
- Every file should "generate" its correct name automatically. This means if you know what a file is, you can figure out what its name should be by applying a rule.
- Every digital object should be self-documenting. This means that both the file name and the document in the file need to contain information about the author, its date, its subject. FILENAME ALONE IS NOT SUFFICIENT.
The Raw Material of Folders and File Names
- List the categories of digital work you want to keep separate. These are your top level folders: personal and work, different projects, different jobs, school/work/personal, etc.
- Inside your school folder, perhaps a subfolder for each course or semester and then course folders inside that? Decide on a hierarchical system (nested folders)
- Devise a personal file name protocol that fully describes files. Examples
- yourName-course-assignment-documenttitle-version-yyyymmdd
- yourName-course-yyyymmdd-assignment-documenttitle-version
In general at least use NAME, PROJECT, and DATE. We use yyyymmdd so that similarly named files will alphabetize by date.
TO DO #1: Create a simple document in Word or Google docs in which you describe in a paragraph your approach to organizing your files - by class? by personal/professional? by date? Make sure you give the file an appropriate name and make it self documenting by including your name and title INSIDE the document as well. We'll refer to this document as your "portfolio document" for the rest of this lab.
Save (or move) the file into your portfolio folder.
What is a bibliography manager?
Your first task is to learn what a bibliography or citation manager or reference manager is. Wikipedia has a decent article on the topic.
A next step is to clarify what the various terms mean. What's the difference between a reference, a citation, a bibliographic entry, a citation style. Way too many of us use reference and citation interchangeably. Both can mean the act of recognizing a source in a text (sometimes by an abbreviated notation such as Smith 1999) and sometimes they mean the listing of the full information telling the reader what the source is.
There are lots of options: Zotero, Mendeley, Endnote, even Word's built-in bib manager.
Which one is best? IAD. See, for example, "How to choose a Citation Manager" at Penn State Libraries or Wikipedia's comprehensive comparison of reference management software.
Go to zotero.org and establish an account. Optionally, download the Zotero Standalone app and install it on your computer.
Let's try out Zotero by looking up the bibliographic details for our textbook in the Mills library catalog. Go to http://library.mills.edu and search for the book by the title (Social Research Methods) or author (Walliman, Nicolas).
- If you have installed the Zotero Standalone app with the extension for your web browser, click on the "Save to Zotero" button at the right of the address bar.
- Otherwise, when logged into Zotero.org, create a new citation by pressing the "Create Item" button and filling in the available information for the book.
Then create a properly formatted citation of this book to include in your portfolio document for this lab.
TO DO #2: Put the publication information from the text book into your library. Use the "CITE" button to create a bibliographic entry in APA (American Psychological Association) format for this, and paste it into your portfolio document.
Walliman, N. (2016). Social research methods: the essentials (2nd edition). Los Angeles: SAGE.
TO DO #3: Apply to join the class's Mills/Oakland Group Library Notice that we have some subfolders for different lectures. Choose an article of interest from this library and add its citation to your portfolio document.
More tutorials here: Screencast Tutorial Page
What is Google Scholar?
Google Scholar is an online, freely accessible search engine that lets users look for both physical and digital copies of articles.
The "library links" for Mills looks like this:
TO DO #4: Find an item by each of your current Mills instructors in Google scholar and add it to your Zotero database. Create a bibliography in the format of your choice using Zotero online. Copy it into your Word or Google doc, and save to your portfolio.
TO DO #5: Follow the work of one or more of your instructors (e.g., here is Ryan). Make a note in your portfolio document about this.
TO DO #6: Do a search for a topic of interest to you this semester. Refine it and then create an alert. Make a note in your portfolio document about this.
TO DO #7: Identify at least two interesting articles from this search. Add them to your Google Scholar library or your Zotero library. Create citations for them using Google Scholar or Zotero and copy these into your portfolio document.