Kelsey's Refrences

Dewan, W. J. (2006). ‘A saucerful of secrets’: An interdisciplinary analysis of UFO experiences.                    Journal of American Folklore, 119(472), 184-202

Donderi, D. (2013) UFOs, ETs and alien abductions: A scientist looks at the evidence.

        Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.

(June 5, 2012) Florida woodland UFO/black forest entity [Television series episode]. In J. Brenkus and                      M. Stern (Producer), Fact or faked: Paranormal files. SYFY.

Tuvix72 (February 18th, 2013). Meteor Hits Russia 2013 - Best Footage Collection. Retrieved                                   from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpmXyJrs7iU

Citations

Citations used to answer the research question of "What is the concentration of alien sightings?"

Book Source:
 Martin, Joel. The Haunting of Twentieth-Century America. 1st ed. New York: Forge, 2011.

Article Source: 
Gepper, Alexander C. T. Extraterrestrial Encounters: UFOs, Science and the Quest forTranscendence, 1947-1972. History & Technology 28, no. 3 (September 2012): 335–62.doi:10.1080/07341512.2012.723340

Internet Source: 

“UFO SIGHTINGS DAILY.” Accessed April 7, 2014. http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/

Primary source: 

“UFO World Sightings.” Accessed April 7, 2014. http://www.ufo-world-sightings.com/Home/Home.html.

Alien Sources I found..

Works Cited

Beyond.html. (n.d.). Retrieved April 7, 2014, from http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/people/jlipps/Beyond.html

Chapter 7: Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Public Understanding: Science Fiction and Pseudoscience. (n.d.). Retrieved April 7, 2014, from http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/ seind02/c7/c7s5.htm

CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90 — Central Intelligence Agency. (n.d.). Retrieved April 7, 2014, from https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/97unclass/ufo.html

Craft, M. (1996). Alien impact (1st ed.). New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Gepper, A. C. T. (2012). Extraterrestrial encounters: UFOs, science and the quest for transcendence, 1947-1972. History & Technology, 28(3), 335–362. doi:10.1080/07341512.2012.723340

Herald-Journal - Google News Archive Search. (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2014, from http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1876&dat=19870313&id=tEIsAAAAIBAJ&sjid=KM4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=6834,5192350

Jones, M. (2013). Mainstream Media and Social Media Reactions to the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life. Astrobiology, History & Society, 313.

Laura, K. (n.d.). Area 51 officially acknowledged, mapped in newly released documents. CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/15/us/area-51-documents/index.html

Lincoln, D. (2013). Alien universe: extraterrestrial life in our minds and in the cosmos. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Osunsanmi, O. (2009). The Fourth Kind. Mystery.

Project Blue Book (UFO) part 1 of 1. (n.d.). FBI. Retrieved April 7, 2014, from http://vault.fbi.gov/Project%20Blue%20Book%20%28UFO%29%20/Project%20Blue%20Book%20%28UFO%29%20part%201%20of%201

Sparks, G. C., & Pellechia, M. (1998). Does television news about UFOs affect viewers’ UFO beliefs?: An experimental investigation. Communication Quarterly, 46(3), 284–294.

Sparks, G. G., Sparks, C. W., & Gray, K. (1995). Media impact on fright reactions and belief in UFOs: the potential role of mental imagery. Communication Research, 22, 3–23. doi:10.1177/009365095022001001

Three in Four Americans Believe in Paranormal. (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2014, from http://www.gallup.com/poll/16915/three-four-americans-believe-paranormal.aspx

Tumminia, D. G. (Ed.). (2007). Alien worlds: social and religious dimensions of extraterrestrial contact (1st ed.). Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press.

Googling Aliens

Although throughout much of a student's academic career they think that he or she knows how to use google. When trying to find internet  sources for a topic such as aliens, one has to know how to find something that is useable. Just googling aliens and one will retrieve results including the amount of aliens living in the United States, joe's alien sighting database, lots of videos of supposed alien encounters, but trying to find credible information will take several pages. Google, actually has limiters that most databases have, people just do not use them or know about them. One can limit the domain by adding to the search site:.org or site:.gov or whatever type of source one desires. This is particularly useful when searching for extraterrestrials. Using only this limiter I was able to find project blue book; which is the government study on aliens. I was also to find that the CIA keep track of supposed alien sightings and their reliability. On Google, one can also limit the location, date published, truncation also works with google. The best way to be able to fully take advantage of the Google advance search options and limiters is to use them and just mess around with them.

Reporting an Alien

Have you seen an alien?

If you have, report it! It is important that individuals who have spotted aliens report them.  Since there is not a current database for alien reporting's, a man named Scott Waring has developed a website to report alien sightings.  Scott went to school to get a Bachelors of Science and has written books.  He was a member of the United States Air Force. He published the site to give individuals who have seen aliens or UFO's a place to report them. It is important to report them so that individuals can analyze many encounters and pieces them together to possibly find more about aliens.

http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ 

The website has a format of a daily blog as information can be updates daily by individuals who have sighted UFO's. The website dates back to 2006 and reports were added daily since then. This also shows the trend of sightings as it becomes more popular as technology increases. People can report sightings easier than in past years with internet sites such as this one.

The source of the sightings are from individuals in society/ We do not not know the credibility of the sightings as we d not know the exact truth about aliens and UFO's. The information that is posted is sometimes accompanied by youtube videos, interviews, and images. 


The website answer the question on how sightings are reported.  It also shows what information is need to sight the information.  The name, location, and a date of discovery is reported with the image, video, or description.  The site also shows were sightings are occurring across the United States.

Check out the site and if you see an alien be sure to report it !!

News Story

This news story popped up on CNN this morning and I thought it would be interesting to share. This shows that what we are researching is current and still be discussed and happening.

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2014/04/05/dnt-trail-camera-ufo-sighting.wlox.html

Kelsey

Finding academic articles

Our research has came to using academic articles to find out more on our research topic and questions. This can be a daunting task but with the right databases and the right search terms one can find good research. Using  a new service called muskiescholar that searches all the school owned databases we can easily search through databases we wouldn't typically think of searching through. Such as sociology or philosophy databases. We also use meta data enabled searching and our previously used truncation and boolean operators. An example of the search I performed was unidentified flying object* OR alien* AND sight*. This search looks for many more searches than just what is stated. It looks for plurals, synonyms and multiple relationships between the terms. Once you do this initial search one can continue to edit the search into a better list of articles with limiters. One limiter I used was Scholarly journals, to make sure I was getting peer reviewed articles, not popular articles of book reviews. Another limiter I used was the subject term extraterrestrial to weed out the articles about illegal aliens. This left a list of around 300 articles in which is better articles and easier to sift through than the approximately 300,000 that initially was returned. There is just some information on finding better scholarly articles that you then can put through the tried and true CRAAP test.

Kelsey

Which print sources to use and how to find them.

          Everyone at one point or another has wanted to find a source and knew it was out there but no matter how much you look you can't find it. This brings about the question: what type of search engine is one using? Is it a meta-data search or a full text search? One first, has to realize what these two types are before one can decide how to search while using them. A full text search is a search in which the search looks through all the pieces of work and tries to find that word in the text of the document. Normally it will give results in the order in which the search word or phrase occurs most. The disadvantage to this method is that it cannot recognize synonyms, homonyms, different spellings of the same word; however, in saying this it will allow a good start to a search. It is the most common type of research engine, therefore we are most common and comfortable with it. Meta-data search engines use the data within the document to group like sources together. This engine is most easily accessible in library data bases because they tag the sources with meta-data. This search is best to search particular areas of a research field once it is narrowed down. Although both of these types of searches offer advantages and disadvantage, they are best used in conjunction with one and another- all the while knowing the weakness of each.
          Once one gets the sources that one thinks is what one was looking for one has to be able to know if it is credible. The easy way to determine credibility is the CRAAP Test: Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, Purpose. To discover currency or the timeliness of the information, one should ask: When was the info published? Posted? Updated? How current does it need to be? To determine relevance or importance of the information one should ask: How relate to your topic? Appropriate level? Other sources agree? For authority or source of the info ask: who is the author? Publisher? Quality? For accuracy or the reliability of the source ask: what are they citing? Reviewed info? Unbiased? And finally purpose or reason the info exist ask: why was it made? Purpose clear? Factual? Biases?
          By using both research engines and the CRAAP test you will be able to find resources that are reliable and usable in your paper

Cody

Contributor to Research

In preparing for our academic research on alien sightings, were have come in contact with a very useful tool that we plan to use throughout our research.

 This software is called Zotero. 

Zotero is free and is an open-source software system that manages bibliographic data.  I seriously recommend this software for any type of research! Upon arrival at a academic site such as academic journal on a database, an icon can be pressed and the citation information from that journal is saved to Zotero.. Zotero pulls out all the information needed for a citation from the site and categorizes it in the software.  Not only does it obtain the information for you on the website, it can easily be added to any document.  When typing the research paper, in text citation can be added with just a click of a button.  Zotero can be synced with Microsoft Word and creates an add in tab.  The tab can add in text ciation which are pulled from the Zotero software as well as a full bibliography page at the end of the research paper.  Zotero is a wonderful program if you are diving in to a research project were many citation are necessary.  In this instance we plan on using Zotero to hold our reference that further explain alien sightings.  The software is also unique in that it allows you to create folders with other Zotero users.  This is essential as we three group members work on our research.  We are able to work independently but drop our source in the same folder, keeping them organized.  This also allows other group member to read sources that other group members have found.

If you yourself are interested in this wonderful software visit: www.zotero.org and download it now.

We will be posting soon to update you on source that we find and sources that we find will be managed using our Zotero software!

Enjoy!
-Kaitlyn 

Aliens in an Academic Light

     This blog is going to document the research process of a group of students as we research alien sightings in an academic setting. We starting by taking 15 minutes to create a mind map of everything we could relate to aliens. This mind map was rather large but from it we created three research questions we wanted to focus our project on. The three questions are:

1. What gives credibility to alien sightings, and how can you find validity in unproven phenomena? 
2. Where are the highest concentration of sightings within the US, and does the high concentration areas correlate with any foreseeable variable?
3. How have alien sightings have influenced popular media, including news, movies, and books.

     These questions also revolve around the larger theme of alien sightings in the US. We also conducted a preliminary search for sources to make sure we could find reliable academic sources to help answer our question. We did this through OhioLink, an inter-library loan program our school uses. From this basic search we found a mass of books that will help us along the way. We also laid out our plan for the blog we would be writing along the way with information about how the project was going, and troubles we were having and in the end what the research told us and how we answered our original three questions. We laid all this out in our research proposal for our professor to review. We're excited to start the project and share our journey along the way.
                                                                                                                            -Kelsey