| Using e-mail: Newsgroups (Usenet) |
| People communicate regularly on the Internet, and some are highly knowledgeable about the subject being discussed. One way to get in on the conversation is to read the postings on a BBS (bulletin board server) or newsgroup (a forum devoted to a particular topic, on which people send in their comments by e-mail). However, for research purposes, you need to be cautious. Anyone can claim to be a particular authority; so be prepared to check a second source to back up what you get from a newsgroup.
Although you can't expect these forums to do your research for you, you will get useful information if you select your group well. Be sure to allow enough time to follow a discussion over several weeks. You may have heard of real time conversations (live chat) on the Internet. The on-line services organize a number of chat rooms on various topics; see pp.00 for addresses for others. The fastest way to get information from newsgroups is to use Dejanews Research Service (http://www.dejanews.com), which allows you to search for a specific topic (thread) previously discussed in all newsgroups--or those you specify. This way you don't have to wait for e-mail, and you don't have to search the archives of the individual newsgroups. Dejanews allows for quite a sophisticated query, so you can specify dates or even the university addresses of those who post. The service also gives good advice on how to conduct the search. The only drawback is that Dejanews lists results in reverse chronology (the latest is listed first), so although you get the best match for your search terms on the top of the list, you are reading answers to earlier communications (which you haven't read yet). Nevertheless, this a more efficient way to track down information from this source--rather than searching through the archives of each newsgroup one at a time. |
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