What about the Google?

There is a big difference between the Library resources we’ve talked about so far and search engines like Google . . . money! Libraries pay expensive subscription fees so that students can access information that is of high academic quality. This proprietary information has been edited, fact checked, and copyrighted. You will not find the same information for free on the Internet!

In contrast, the Internet is largely unmediated resulting in a fantastic democratic platform where anyone can post anything at any time. There is a wealth of information available. It just takes more consideration on your part to evaluate it, for example:

• Authorship: Who is the author of the site, are they credible, what biases do they reflect?
  
  
• Accuracy: Is the information accurate, how do you know?
  
  
• Currency: How current is the information, is there a date, when was the page last updated?
  
  
• Domain: What is the difference between information found on a .com, .gov, .edu or .org and does it matter?

For a more complete check list on evaluating web sites, please see this tutorial. We encourage you to use this check list when evaluating a web site you are considering using for an academic paper or project.

Google Advanced Search offers additional tools to improve your Internet searching. For example, you can limit the domain to retrieve only .gov or .edu. There is also a link to federal, state, and local government web sites (http://www.google.com/ig/usgov) that can be a good source of data on various topics from the environment to healthcare to education and much more.

And remember – Google isn't the only search engine! Try ujiko, which sorts your results based on similarities, and refines results based on your response; and Clusty, which groups similar results on the left sidebar, especially handy when your search terms are ambiguous – to see what we mean, search a word like “rings” or “seal” to see how well the search engine shows the different meanings. Engines like Ujiko or Clusty do a good job of showing results for rings as jewelry, the rings of Saturn, and so on.

Next week we’ll talk about the social context of information; that is, the different types of information you find from different sources,who owns information, and how to use academic information responsibly.

See you next week! Robin and Sheila, Fusion Librarians