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The Ancient World

First of all I have copied and pasted my research brief so the rest of you guys understand a little about my blog.

For this research task I am choosing the topic 'The Ancient World' from 'The history of libraries, books and communication' page, because I think this would be a very interesting area for both the client and myself as I would like to develop my own understanding about this area. In this project I have chosen four subjects to cover and they are; clay tablets as library materials, The Dead Sea Scrolls, the spread of the original alphabet and its adaption by various peoples around the world and Papyrus scrolls as library materials. I have chosen these subjects because I feel that they all relate to one another and it may be beneficial for the researcher and may be of interest to the client encouraging them to use the library more.     

With these four subjects, I intend to cover various research methods that I studied in research skills 1. For each blog post I make I aim to have used a different research method and provide a different item each week whether it be physical or digital, maybe on one week I will do a physical item then the other week a digital item so I can relate to a broader audience. There are many ways to find information and I am going to try to cover most of those methods to show you my research capabilities. I will be using search engines at first which I feel will have the best returns as they are the leading research methods, Google, Yahoo and Bing are the most popular search engines today.  

Monographs and journal titles; I will use various library catalogues, maybe one state library which will be the State Library of Victoria and a couple of public libraries in my council to find a few items. I will also try and provide an even mixture of relevant materials for people who prefer hard copies. I could also try to find some kind of audio or visual item on YouTube to post on my blog but I have a feeling that might be a bit difficult to find.   

I will also use an online ready reference tool such as the Internet Public Library website which I know has a large range of items. Also subject directories such as About.com and virtual references such as Encyclopedia Britannica which I think may be a little more challenging as they have a little less information.   

By using a vast range of search methods, it should provide sufficient information about my chosen subjects and will also allow me to have an ample amount of data for each of my blog posts.  

I have a short statement about me on the home page if any of you are interested. I look forward to reading everyone's posts and I hope you guys enjoy mine as well! 

First findings.

Nicole Silvester, 2009, Clay tablets as books, glam media, viewed 27th August 2012, <http://suite101.com/article/clay-tablets-can-be-books-too-a155685 > 

The first topic I decided to research is 'clay tablets as library materials'; I firstly did a catalogue search on the State Library of Victoria's website where though it came up with a few results, I didn't feel they were really appropriate and relevant enough for this subject. So I thought the best results would come from a search engine such as a Google search. 

What I did this week is I typed www.google.com into the browsers address bar. Once the page loaded I then searched 'clay tablets as library materials', I tried the heading first to get the best results. 

Firstly it came up with a few websites that didn't really appeal to me for example Wiki, and we all know Wiki isn't really the most reliable source. But a couple of results down was a website that I thought was perfect; it provides a basic description about what clay tablets are and a brief description of their history. I thought providing a website with basic information first was the best thing to do. By doing this I thought it would give an insight about clay tablets to people that are a little less familiar about their history or even what they are. I also chose this as I don't really know much about them myself. 

The website also offers further information about specific clay tablets and relating topics, for those who are interested in further exploring. 

I also found a interesting video off YouTube about 12 clay tablets of Gilgamesh. I first used the same key words I used for my Google search above. The search returned a few videos, but with YouTube you have to siphon through videos that aren't related. Luckly I didn't really have to do that for this search. 

rewilkins2, The Epic of Gilgamesh (1/11), 28th February, viewed 30th August 2012, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxPhk84TTnw >

I would have to say that the only difficulty I had this week was trying to find a relevant item on the State Library of Victoria's catalogue. Finding a website was quite easy, but I'm sure over the next few weeks I will have a few more difficulties as I try different search methods and different results. My YouTube results were relevant to what I was looking for so finding the right video wasn't too much of a task. As for my research process, I think I did quite well and managed to find a good result in a short amount of time. 
Although when it comes time to find different formats, the process may take a little longer but we'll just have to wait and see. 

In conclusion, I find that the chosen website is perfect for the first finding in my researching blog as it isn't too intense for both the reader and me seeings as I have never done a blog before. 

• Week 2 we have a website for clay tablets as library materials and a YouTube video regarding Gilgamesh tablets.