What kind of information do you need?

It's tempting nowadays to simply open a Web browser, click the "search" button, locate a few sites, and call that research.  That's exactly what many of our students are doing,  and who can blame them?  The ease of locating information on the World Wide Web is enticing, so enticing that my first stop, too, is online.

The problem isn't that our students are using the World Wide Web to do research; the problem is that much of the information they are finding is questionable at best. Scholarly organizations such as MLA, in order to deal with this dilemma, caution researchers that, whatever information they use from online sources (and they prefer what they call "sponsored Web sites") must be verified by consulting other, more traditional (e.g., print) sources.  In other words, MLA allows the use of Web sites as long as they aren't relied on.

A better answer is to teach students to locate reliable information--wherever it may be hiding.
 

• Where to look for information depends on the type of information you need. The type of information you need depends on the specific rhetorical situation for which you are writing (e.g., audience, purpose, occasion, and medium).  For example, most scholarly audiences expect information to be documented and reviewed.  For many subjects, information also needs to be as current as possible.

• Forms of documentation may differ substantially.  Within academic fields, there is a wide variety of styles of documentation; electronic sources often rely on links to other online sources; and popular magazines, trade publications, and news media may refer only to "studies" or "reliable informants" without providing details.  Information obtained from online forums, chats, or email often will provide no documentation at all.  This doesn't mean the information is not factual.  It does mean that it is questionable and cannot be relied upon for most scholarly projects.

Where should you look for information?

Our students are right--the first step in locating information is to log on.  However, instead of beginning with an Internet search engine, we can encourage students to begin with the online library catalog and online databases usually linked from the library home page.to enable them to readily locate the type of information they need for most academic projects.

• Use library catalogs, online databases, and search engines to locate different kinds of information.
• Use keyword searches and Boolean operators to help focus your search.
• Finally, evaluate the information you find--wherever you find it.

Library catalogs

To locate scholarly books, consult your library catalog, but don't stop there.  Thanks to the World Wide Web, it is now possible to locate books in libraries around the world.  You can get access to these books through Interlibrary Loan requests.  Allow enough time (usually 2-3 weeks) for the books to arrive.
 
• Library of Congress
• Yahoo!'s List of Libraries
• Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations

Online databases

To locate scholarly articles as well as many scholarly books,  articles in popular magazines or newspapers, and other periodical sources, you need to consult indexes.  For instance, the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature is a popular index of articles in magazines.  Nowadays, most indexes are available in powerful, easy-to-search online forms, called databases.  Many of these databases now also offer full-text or full-image access to the articles they index. It is important to note the difference between articles accessed through an online database and articles published on the World Wide Web. For more information, see Citing Sources.

If you locate articles that are not available through the database, use the bibliographic information provided to determine if your library carries the periodicals you need.  If not, you can request a copy of the articles through Interlibrary Loan.  Most databases require subscriptions to access the information they contain.  Your library probably subscribes to hundreds of academic databases, providing access through the library's Web site.

World Wide Web

You can find information on almost anything published on the World Wide Web.  Unfortunately, this means that you must sift through a lot of information looking for the nuggets you seek.  Luckily, search engines help you perform powerful searches, often using keyword searching and Boolean operators.  But different search engines perform searches differently and search for different types of information.  Choose the right search engine for the type of information you need.  If your search results are disappointing, try combining different terms, or use a different search engine.
 

Search Engines and Directories

About.com (http://about.com)

A network of over 700 topic-specific sites overseen by professional guides.

AltaVista (http://www.altavista.com/)

A whole-Internet search engine, that allows for simple text searches as well as more advanced search techniques.

AOL Search (http://search.aol.com/)

AOL Search is the only search engine that, in addition to searching the Internet, allows AOL subscribers to search America Online's proprietary content.

Ask Jeeves (http://www.askjeeves.com/)

Get your own personal butler!  Just ask Jeeves your question in plain English and let him do the legwork for you.

Excite (http://www.excite.com)

Excite offers access to Channels, a patented ICE (Intelligent Concept Extraction) search engine, a Web guide with reviews of 25,000 sites, and more.

Google (http://www.google.com)

A search engine that ranks Web sites based on link structures (one link equals one vote) as well as examining the "importance" of the pages linking to a given site, to ensure that results are the most highly relevant.

HotBot (http://www.hotbot.com)

HotBot indexes every word, link, and media file on more than 110 million Web documents, refresing its entire database of documents every three to four weeks, and allowing users to construct sophisticated search queries using a simple, point-and-click interface, intuitive pulldown menus, and plain English terminology.

LookSmart (http://www.looksmart.com)

LookSmart offers keyword searching, a category-based directory, and interactive search services.  Their unique combination of these elements provides the navigation infrastructure to help find useful information quickly.

Lycos (http://www.lycos.com)

Lycos offers a free customizable search page, with keyword searching, a category-based directory, multimedia searching, and parental controls.

WebCrawler (http://webcrawler.com)

Part of the Excite network, WebCrawler offers keyword searching and a category index, a customizable home page, and a free downloadable WebCrawler direct search engine for your desktop.

Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com)

One of the largest search directories on the Web, Yahoo! offers over half a million sites divided into more than 25,000 categories.

Keyword Searching

Most library catalogs, online databases, and Web search engines allow for searching by keywords or terms.  The keywords you choose—whether names, places, titles, concepts, or people—will shape your search. A comparatively small database, such as an online library catalog, may ask you to indicate whether a word you are searching is a title (t), author (a), subject (s), or some other type of term the system recognizes. Imagine, for instance, that you were preparing to write a report on the book Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian, a novel which takes place in the time of the Napoleonic wars.  In such a case, typing the title of the book (Master and Commander), the name of its author (Patrick O’Brian), or a narrow subject keyword (Napoleonic wars) will often produce manageable numbers of items to examine and read.

t (title) Master and Commander  8 items
a (author) Patrick O’Brian 26 items
s (subject) Napoleonic wars 25 items

However, a simple search of the same items on the World Wide Web, a huge database, might overwhelm you.

Master and Commander 8,693,249 items
Patrick O’Brian 2,043,945 items
Napoleonic wars 1,170,568 items

Computers can only search for the exact string of letters which you type in.   They cannot always recognize different forms of the same word.  For instance in the above example, searching for the keywords "Napoleonic wars" would miss any articles or Web pages that contain variations of these words, such as "Napoleon" or "war."  Truncating your terms (literally, shortening them) allows you to search for words with a common root.  For example, the word vote has the following variants:  vote, votes, voting, voter, voters.    List these in a column and draw a line down the column following the last letter that is the same in all these words :

vot|e
vot|es
vot|ing
vot|er
vot|ers

The root that is common to all of the forms of the word is vot.  Replacing the omitted (or variable) letters with an asterisk, the truncated term you would use in your search becomes vot*. Most databases use an asterisk (*) to indicate truncation, although some use other characters, such as a question mark (?) or exclamation point (!).  Be sure to read the instructions for the particular search engine or database you are searching.

Use this technique with caution; searching for “vot*” will help to broaden your search for various forms of the word “vote,” but it may also return irrelevant hits for words such as “votive” or the French word “votre.”  To eliminate these terms, try using Boolean operators such as NOT (e.g., vot* NOT votive) and selecting English-only if your database allows you to limit your search.

For more information, see Elon University Library's Keyword help screen .

Source:  Carol Grotnes Belk Library, Elon University, Elon, NC.  (Used without permission)

Boolean Operators

To make keyword searches more effective, you can combine terms in most library catalogs, online databases, and search engines by using Boolean operators.

 

Term	Description
AND	Limits your search to only those documents that contain both terms, in any order. For example, death AND penalty
OR	Searches for all instances of either term in documents. For example, death OR penalty
NOT	Eliminates terms from your search so that documents containing the term will not be listed. For example, death AND penalty NOT animals
" "	Groups words together and searches for them as phrases in a document. For example, "death penalty"
[ ]	Nesting search terms allows for greater flexibility in combining operators. For example, ["death penalty" AND "supreme court"] NOT animals
+	A plus sign ("+") before each term ensures that each term will be searched for. For example, +death +penalty
-	The minus sign ("-") will exclude terms from the search. For example, +death -penalty
* , ?	Asterisks ("*") or question marks ("?") allow for "wild card" searching, that is, searches that include all forms of a word or all types of a file. For example, to search for documents that contain the word "penalty" as well as the plural form, "penalties," use penalt* or penalt? (depending on the database).

Library catalogs, online databases, and WWW search engines vary greatly in how they perform searches; make sure you read the directions or help files and customize your searching accordingly.

Test Yourself

Keyword Searching and Boolean Operators
Truncation
WWW Searching

Evaluating Information

Now comes the real test--evaluating the information you have found.  One of the most important questions to ask at this point is "Where am I?"  It's sometimes easy to confuse full-text/full-image articles in a database with Web pages; it's also easy to get lost in a Web site (especially one with frames) as one link leads to another.  Know where you are.

You can being by understanding how Internet addresses (or URLs, for Uniform Resource Locator) work.

 
 

Protocol	Domain	Directory	Sub-Directories	File	File Type
http://	www.cas.usf.edu	english	walker	mla	.html
http://	www.m-w.com
http://	www.columbia.edu	acis	documentation/ghttp	search-info	.html

 
The last part of the domain name also offers you some clues to the type of organization or institution that may sponsor the site.
 

.edu	Educational Institution	.gov	Government Agency
.org	An organization, usually non-profit	.mil	Military Institution (i.e., Army, Navy, etc.)
.com	Commerical Institution (i.e., a business)	.net	A Network site

 
Pay attention to these clues; like the publisher of a book, they can give you some idea of the reliability of the information you will find on a Web site or page before you even visit it.  But don't stop there.  Your own critical reading skills will ultimately be your best determiner of the reliability of any source--print or online.  If the source leaves you with any doubts, any unanswered questions, then reconsider the merits of including it in your own work, or you may leave your readers with the same doubts.

Ask Questions

• Authority
1. Is the author or authoring organization identified?
2. Does the site give information about the author's education, employment, or experience?
3. Is there a way to contact the author?
• Timeliness
1. Is the date of publication or last modification given?
2. Is the information current?
3. Do the links and graphics work?
• Relevance
1. Does the information answer important questions you may have or raise new ones you hadn't thought about?
2. Does it present examples or provide statistics that would be useful in supporting your arguments?
3. Does the site present counter-arguments you will need to address?
• Author's Purpose (Bias)
1. Is the author's purpose apparent or explicit?
2. Can you detect any biases that may affect the author's choice to present or omit facts or ideas?
3. Does the author's choice of audience affect the presentation?


Things to watch out for:

Advocacy	If the organization or person who creates the Web site advocates a particular point of view, you may not find balanced information that might support the other point of view.
Advertising	If the site aims to convince you to buy something, it may not given unbiased information.
Humor or Satire	Many sites present tongue-in-cheek information.  Do not mistake this for straightforward fact!

How do I cite electronic sources?

Citing Internet sources is, unfortunately, still not as straightforward as citing print-based sources.  Part of the problem is the confusion over how to translate elements of print publication (such as page numbers and publishers) for online publications.  The basic idea is the same, however, regardless of the style you need to follow:  the purpose of a bibliographic citation--for any type of source--is to give the reader enough information to re-locate the source if need be.

Finding some of the information you will need to cite electronic sources may take a bit of detective work.  Don't give up--and don't forget to ask your library's reference librarians for help!

MLA insists on surrounding Internet addresses with angle brackets; APA insists that a URL in the body of the text is sufficient.  Of course, I disagree with them both.  One thing we all agree on, however, is that the URL in your citation needs to actually call up the source you are citing.  Make sure, therefore, that you double check the addresses.  If the URL does not allow direct access (as will usually be the case with articles accessed through online databases from your University catalog), then provide the name of the database or electronic publication, any print publication information (for articles in databases), and, if necessary, any links or search terms (for example, if you access information in a source available through America Online, you may need to include the AOL keywords you used in your citation).

For more information on citing electronic sources following Columbia Online Style (humanities style for papers and projects following MLA or Chicago guidelines for print sources; scientific style for papers and projects following APA or CSE guidelines), visit the Web site for The Columbia Guide to Online Style at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/cgos/idx_basic.html