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BOOK REVIEW
Assignment Title: Scholarly Book Review
Participation:
Part 1, critical posts: Group.
Part 2, scholarly essay: Individual.
Due dates:
Part 1, critical posts: 7 March through 4 April 2001.
Part 2, scholarly essay: 25 April 2001.
Format:
Part 1, critical posts: Three multi-parargaph discussion board posts.
Part 2, scholarly essay: Formal seven to nine page essay in APA final
manuscript format.
Submission Method:
Part 1, critical posts: Discussion Board posts.
Part 2, scholarly essay: Email to the course emailbox with the essay attached
as a MSWord document.
Maximum points: 20 (includes discussion board participation).
Introduction: Throughout their working life, library and information
practitioners must critically consider the information they read within
the context of their academic and life experiences. This assignment helps
students prepare for such critical evaluation by choosing one of the books
below, reading it closely, and writing an integrative critical review
of it.
Goals: The goals of this assignment are as follows:
- To understand at a selected scholars view of the impact of information
technology on the information profession.
- To gain experience critically discussing a book using electronic means.
- To gain experience in writing critical essays of other scholars work
and comparing it with the knowledge you have gained within and outside
this course. To meet this goal, simple summaries are not sufficient
to meet the requirements of this assignment. Your review must be analytic,
evaluative, and, to the extent appropriate, comparative.
Tasks: For this assignment you will:
- Early in the course, choose one of the books from the following two
and post your choice on the discussion board. Since there are ten students
in the class and there needs to be a critical number for a good discussion,
each book will be selected by five students. Please select a book you
have not already read. If you have read both of them please let the
TA know.
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Author
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Title
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| Borgman |
From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure:
Access to Information in the Networked World (2000) |
| Winograd and Flores |
Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation
for Design (1986) |
- Read the book closely considering the viewpoint of the author in the
context of other things you have learned inside and outside of this
class.
- Discuss the contents of the book with others who have chosen it. The
TAs will provide discussion subtopics under the monograph discussion
topic on the discussion board.
- Post at least three substantial, multi-paragraph contributions
to the discussion board about the book being reviewed between the
dates listed above. Students failing to make these substantial contributions
in that time will not be allowed to submit the review, nor will
they be allowed to complete the course.
- For maximum points you should respond to the posts of others
in your group (or to other group if you have read those books also).
- Write your essay and email it to the course
emailbox as a MSWord attachment.
- Be sure to review the book that was written, not the book that
was not; be evaluative, but not dismissive.
- Identify specific strengths and weaknesses of the book being
reviewed and state explicitly why they are strengths and weaknesses.
- Put the book in the context of its importance and/or connection
to information technology and the class as a whole. This section
should be the longest part of your paper.
- Feel free to refer to any other material with which you are familiar,
whether read for this course or not, if you believe that it applies
to your review. Be sure to document this other material fully and
formally.
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