[nabs-l] research techniques and databases

[Jim Reed]

Ashley, 

Thanks for writing this post. I had never really stopped to take a moment to consider how a blind person (using non-visual techniques) would go about writing a research paper. Wow, talk about a hard job made even harder!

First, I wouldn't entierly dismiss the possibility of a reader. The internship is only temporary, so call your VR office to see if they will pay for a reader, since the position is only temporary, they may consider a reader a valid and worthwhile expense that will eventually help you land full time permant employment. Are you taking this internship for shool credit? If so, maybe the school DSS office can help with a reader. 

The only research suggrstion I have for you is to not forget about the face-to-face (or over the phone) interview. You can get alot of information, contacts, and leads via interviews. Don't forget that you work for an agency that provideds federal grant money; community leaders and law enforcement personell should want to talk to you. Use that to your advantage. 

Hope this helps and thanks for the info, 
Jim

"From compromise and things half done, 
Keep me with stern and stubborn pride,
And when at last the fight is won, 
... Keep me still unsatisfied." --Louis Untermeyer

--- On Wed, 6/24/09, Ashley Bramlett <bookwormahb at earthlink.net> wrote:

From: Ashley Bramlett <bookwormahb at earthlink.net>
Subject: [nabs-l] research techniques and databases
To: "National Association of Blind Students mailing list" <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
Date: Wednesday, June 24, 2009, 8:33 PM

Hi all,

This is sort of a school question but also one for life.  We have to research on the job so it won't go away.
Since there's new people on the list, maybe some new ideas will come about.  

I graduated with a BA in liberal studies, studying social science and communication.  I'm getting an internship  and research has come up.  I will help them research crime prevention and bullying and maybe other things; I'm working for the National crime prevention Council.


Although I survived research and writing papers, it was something I disliked; it was time consuming and frustrating.  My school had online databases but I still used hard copy sources in addition to online.  Some info just wasn't electronic.  Due to problems like the inability to skim with jaws for key things, image PDFs and paper sources, I used readers mainly.  I directed them to skim for certain key points.  We read abstracts in journals or table of contents if a book to see if it was relevant.  Then we picked out the actual sections and read them.
I researched on my own through the internet as well.
I wonder what I can do if anything to do research better.  I need to be more independent with it since I do not have a reader on the job.  That's too bad because they can skim well where as with jaws you can only go by paragraph to get a sense of the document.
My questions are:
1. Which databases did you find accessible?  Is PSYCH Info accessible?
2. How do you use those PDF files?  What can you do in Openbook to access them?
Many full text articles were PDF rendering them inaccessible without using a scanner.
3. In databases with PDFs, do you find an option for a HTML link wich is a text link?  When searching google.com they have PDF files as HTML as well.
4. What do you do to determine if an article is relevant?  So far I thought of reading the abstract and/or intro.  Sometimes I read entire articles only to find them not as useful as I thought they would be based on the intro.
5. Is googlescholar.com accessible?

Thanks.
Ashley
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