Matching Sources to Needs

For my first research question, What are our basic first amendment rights?, I would use the US Bill of Rights as a reference source and scholarly law journals that give professional interpretations on legal rights in regards to censorship.

For my second research question, What kind of censorship do movie productions have to deal with?, I would use the World Wide Web to get some ideas of who faces censorship and then search for scholarly journals on the topic to get expert information and opinions.

For my third research question, How does media censorship affect civil rights in China?, I would again use the World Wide Web to find out who might be speaking out for Chinese citizens, then find credible news sources with accurate reporting of facts.

Summary for Research Journal

I found this experience to be extremely enlightening. Last quarter I took my first online class and was ill prepared. I wish I would have been privy to this amazing information for use during my final paper. If I would have been informed that the GVRL was available to me I would have had a much easier time collecting information for that class. I used Wikipedia to try and find ideas and articles pertaining to my subject but I found this very tedious and unsuccessful. The GVRL is so easy to use and has already helped me come up with so many ideas. I just did a quick search for women's studies and found a myriad of sources that would have given me a far better research paper. I look forward to learning more useful techniques in this class.

Three Research Questions

Here are my three research questions that allowed me to focus my search concerning censorship:

• What are our basic first amendment rights?
• What kind of censorship do movie productions have to deal with?
• How does media censorship affect civil rights in China?

I found this to be very interesting and I am sure this will help me focus on future searches throughout my college career. I look forward to learning even more on research techniques.

Wikipedia Search vs. Library Search

The topic I chose was censorship. The tool I used was Wikipedia. The search term I entered was censorship. Here is the keyword list:

Censorship

1. Political Censorship
2. Meta Censorship
3. Implementation
4. Map alteration
5. Internet
6. Specific Country

Here is my citation for Wikipedia:

Censorship. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 15 January 2010. Web. 16 January 2010.

I found the deep web much more helpful and in depth than Wikipedia. It was quite shocking to see the differentiation between the two search tools.

First Research Journal Post

The topic I chose was censorship. The tool I used was the Gale Virtual Reference Library. The search term I entered was censorship. Here is the keyword list:

Censorship

1. Obscenity
2. Boycotts
3. “citizen” groups
4. Hicklin rule
5. Prior restraint
6. Book banning
7. Moral standards
8. First amendment
9. Media
10. Motion picture production code (1930)
11. Mail and postal
12. Merchandising under scrutiny for movies
13. China
14. Germany
15. “virtual police officers” in Beijing

Here are my citations for sources:

Censorship of Books (Canon Law). J. C. CALHOUN and J. A. CORIDEN. New Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 3. 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003. p336-337.

Censorship, Obscenity, and Pornography Law and Policy. Andrea Friedman. Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered History in America. Ed. Marc Stein. Vol. 1. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2004. p202-205.

Farscape Webisodes

Farscape was an amazing sci-fi show conceived by Rockne S. O'Bannon and produced by Jim Henson Productions. It was canceled after four seasons and Farscape's faithful watchers were left with a cliffhanger which had no following season to resolve. Brian Henson later secured the rights to Farscape and produced a three hour miniseries called, "Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars. This was great but I was left wanting more. In December of 2008 a comic-book miniseries was released and now I am still left waiting for my Farscape needs to be fulfilled. The only answer is new Farscape webisodes that still have not come into fruition. I know I cannot be the only one who feels this way, there has to be scores of us out there breathlessly awaiting our Farscape fix. Oh well, after all tomorrow is another day!