Galileo

Search Engine
Choosing the topics for the three research essays has been a difficult task but the main concern for this selection is for it to be something interesting and enjoyable to study. The research tool that was recommended in class was GALILEO; however, the first contact with it was at the public library just to find a book. Discovering the immensity of the information it gives and many ways to research a topic, GALILEO could be a little overwhelming, but it is a way to find exact and reliable information unlike the commonly used search engine: Google.
These days, navigating through the databases has been hard to handle and to be familiar with, but I started my search with the first essay topic: “Labor Day”.   I started in the subject of History and the database of History Reference Center obtaining 36047 hits, too much to start with. Then I checked the peer reviewed box and the total of hits decreased to 7433; this total number of hits shows that the search could be reduced with the peer reviewed documents. I changed the searched adding the Boolean Operators and looked for “Labor day and origins” where I found just 1 hit. After this search I decided to look in another database, World History Collection, where I started my research again for my topic “Labor Day”. This time I acquired 8 hits and marking the box of the full text, I obtained 7 hits. Looking inside one of these documents gave me new words to look for in the databases like “Knights of labor or 1882” with 767 hits, giving me the suggestion that the more precise the words I used for my research, the number of hits decrease notably and the information is more specific.
For understanding the use of GALILEO, I also typed many words from the different topics trying to change the initial topic but it was not a good idea because it became unmanageable and gained too much information, so I decided to came back to my original topic and I changed the subject to Arts and Humanities in the International...