Digging into databases and books

Cannell search

Search terms: Military and internet and Censorship

Book title: Civil Liberties

Author: James D. Torr, book editor    

City of Publication: San Diego

Publisher: Greenhaven Press 

Published date: 2003

 Located on second floor of Cannell library

JC599.US C546 2003

This is a circulation book

This book is a compilation of current controversies; it is only relevant to 2003 and earlier. The date is within the time frame of the current conflicts we have engaged in as a country and so the information could be current as far as measures the military has taken to secure its information in light of current technology. I am not real excited about the book, but it did have a subject within its contents that may be helpful: Government anti-terrorism measures threaten to severely weaken civil liberties. The other criterion to use this book is that it is published by a house that I recognize; they print books used in school curriculum.

Subject headings: The links in the Subject section held more promise. The headings were Civil rights—United States, National security—United States and Terrorism—United States—Prevention. I clicked on the link for National security—United States and was taken to the Nearby SUBJECTS page. There are 51 entries under this heading, so I clicked on that link and was taken to the Results page where I found a much more interesting book: Bombs and Bandwidth; The Emerging Relationship Between Information Technology and Security.

The biggest difference between Cannell and Summit is that from the beginning there were many more options in Summit. The same books showed up from Cannell in Summit but it was nice to have the book cover displayed in Summit. My original search terms did not give me a very good selection on the first couple of pages of Summit so I had to change them to Military and Internet and security and censorship. My options were cut from 120 to 60. I found a book that may give me some more areas to investigate: 

Summit search

Search terms: Military and internet and security and Censorship

Book title: Censored 2007: the top 25 censored stories

Author: Peter Phillips    

City of Publication: New York

Publisher: Seven Stories 

Published date: 2006

 I can request this book from 5 libraries located in Portland area and Seattle

OCLC Number: 81148713

Call number for Portland Comm. College: 909.83 P55  2007  

This is a circulation book

I discovered that the call numbers differ between libraries, but the OCLC Number is a Worldcat designation.

The publisher was not familiar to me so I looked them up; they are a champion of free speech and alternative views. They consider themselves a publisher of voices of conscience. This is not a resounding vote of confidence for an authority, but it could give me some ideas and possibly facts to look into. The censored works that are covered sounded promising for my research, but there was not a sample of the articles to look at so I would have to get the book to know.

Under Related Subject: History, Modern—1945-1989, Journalism—Political aspects—United states, Television broadcasting of new—United States, Freedom of the press—United States, Censorship—United States and Reportage literature, American. 

Freedom of the press looks like it may have more promising entries to look through…

IT Pro Books 24x7 was interesting to look in. When I went to advanced search the additional fields held the ability to search by Content: full text and Code listings or General info: all, Titles, ISBNs, authors/ speakers, publishers or by In Notes. 

When I entered my search terms, the books that popped up all dealt with internet security and not much that specifically talked about military security or censorship. Changing my search terms did not change the available titles to ones that I could work with. Obviously, the books are going to be mainly technical books that deal with the nuts and bolts of security and not the ethics, problems of specific industries that use computers or military censorship. But it was interesting to look through and I will keep it in my arsenal of research locations and information. 

Google Books was blocked by my administrator and I could not get hold of him to change the settings Friday night. I was not able to search this data base, but will get him to unblock it Saturday (after this gets turned in).

Summary: Cannell had the least amount of books that popped up directly from my initial search but it did have more titles available under the Subjects section. This is a more valuable tool as far as the books are available closer to home and I can look at them without checking them out or waiting for them to arrive in the mail. Summit has more titles, and as long as you have the time to wait, you have a little bit more options for research. I do not like having to wait for books to arrive and then finding out that they do not have the information you need and you have to start all over.  I like that all of these resources offer e-book titles, but Google Books ( I was able to look at this source a bit at school) seems to have the majority of these resources.  Books 24x7 seem to have the most flexible search abilities, as long as you are looking for technical based books. I think that I prefer Summit as there are so many more options to refine my search and it seems to be a bit more user friendly in the way it is laid out.