The internet is a wonderful research tool, providing all sorts of information at your fingertips! Keep in mind, though, that you must make sure that information you find there is accurate.
Anyone can publish information on the internet, which underscores the importance of the source analysis questions discussed in Session Five. These questions help ensure that the information you find is credible.
Researching online differs from library research, and it requires careful evaluation. Printed materials found in a library are typically reviewed by experts and often undergo a peer-review process. In contrast, information posted on the internet may not be assessed or vetted in the same way. Therefore, it’s wise not to rely solely on online resources for your research.
To check the validity of information, a fact-checking website can be consulted, such as:
- Snopes:snopes.com
- Politifact:politifact.com
- Fact Check:factcheck.org
Preferred Sites
Here are some useful and reliable websites.
Wolfram
The Wolfram Research group offers several sites to help you with your most technical questions. MathWorld (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/) focuses on math theories, while Alpha (http://www.wolframalpha.com/) is a knowledge engine that can help you calculate almost anything.
Bartleby.com
Here, you can browse thousands of reference books, search for quotations, and more. Check it out at http://bartleby.com/. If you cannot find what you are looking for here, try Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/).
Canadian and U.S. Encyclopedias
Check out the Canadian Encyclopedia at https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca. An excellent American encyclopedia is provided by the Smithsonian Institution and is located at http://si.edu/encyclopedia.
Encyclopedia Britannica
For a more global view, try Encyclopedia Britannica at http://www.britannica.com/.
ERIC
Properly known as the Education Resources Information Center, ERIC allows you to search all kinds of educational literature, including journals. ERIC is at http://www.eric.ed.gov/.
Google offers two excellent search engines customized for scholarly articles (http://scholar.google.com) and books (http://books.google.com). You can also check out the Google News Archive at http://news.google.com/archivesearch – an excellent source for news articles and timelines.
Internet Archive
You can find snapshots of almost any website with the Internet Archive at http://www.archive.org/.
Dun & Bradstreet
http://www.dnb.com/ is the place to go to confirm business information. Although most information requires a paid membership, you can see the name and address of any business for free. The securities and stock exchange of the country in which the company operates is another good resource for business information.
About Wikipedia
Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org) is one of the internet’s great controversies. On the plus side, it is available in many languages, it is free, and it has information on almost every topic that you can imagine. On the negative side, anyone can post to Wikipedia, so the information is not always accurate.
If you are researching for an academic purpose, professors and universities often ban the use of Wikipedia. So, first and foremost, find out what the rules surrounding your purpose are and abide by them.
Always treat Wikipedia with the utmost skepticism and only as a starting point. First, be sure to carefully analyze the source of the article. (Sources should be listed at the bottom of the article; if there are none, dismiss the article completely.) Then, go back to the primary source to verify the information, and cite the original source, rather than Wikipedia.
