Ten Tips On Using Google In College Research
October 31, 2010 by michaelm
Filed under Online College, Online Education
1.) Many students instinctively go to Wikipedia for their information. This is not necessarily a bad thing as long as you use the site for basic reference information and finding further sources, but you should never cite Wikipedia it in your papers.
2) Learn how to properly cite websites - your professor and other readers will want to know where exactly you got the information you include in the project.
3) Be careful when relying on or citing questionable sources, such as random blogs or websites. You want to make sure you are getting accurate, unbiased information, and it’s often hard to track down the sources of information on some of these sites.
4) Instead, try to focus more on authoritative websites. Sites ending with .gov or .edu are a great place to start.
5) Look for official sources of information when looking through the Google results. What counts as ‘official’ depends on your project. If you are writing about a health topic, you may want to trust a site like WebMD over Joe’s Medical Blog, unless you have a good reason to trust Joe!
6) Use Google to find other databases that may contain papers, articles, and other information pertinent for your project.
7) Google can return search results to you beyond the simple website or blog, such as primary sources. You may benefit from using these sources, like official documents, letters, and journals, depending on your project.
Many newspapers and other periodicals are included in Google’s index, so make use of these sources if you find them in your search results.
9) Check Google Books - the full texts of many scholarly books are available here.
10) Finally, use Google scholar to find the best sources of all - peer reviewed, scholarly articles from journals in your field of interest.
