Introduction

The Internet links computers all over the world to each other so that they can “share” the information stored in them. This allows us quick, 24/7 access to a vast array of free resources. Because it is so vast, however, the Internet isn’t organized like the books on the shelves of a library or articles in a database. Imagine looking for a book in a library in which all of the books have been taken off of the shelves and piled randomly on the floor. If you’ve ever been frustrated by looking for information on the Internet, you’ll know what that feels like. Another downside to conducting college-level research is that anyone can publish just about anything they like, which makes it difficult to tell whom to trust when it comes time to research and write your paper. Books, newspapers, magazines, and journals are produced by publishing companies, journalists, and scholars, and none of them would make very much money if they could just write whatever they wanted. This is not to say that books, newspapers, magazines, and journals are perfect compared to the Internet; they just go through a system of checks and balances before being published for the world to read.

Even though the Internet isn’t “owned” or organized by the HCC Library like its books and databases, the HCC Library staff can still help you find sites useful to your research. They can also help you with your most important task when conducting research on the Internet: determining whether or not the information you have found is reliable. Because this aspect of Internet research is so important, it will be the focus of much of this section. Don’t despair if you need technical help, though—that is, if you just don’t know how to search the Internet. Talk to your instructor or a member of the Library staff if you want to start with the basics. Chances are, you know a lot more than you think you do!

Search Engines

We get to the information that’s compiled on other computers around the world in part by using search engines. If you know or are given address for a website, you simply type it into your browser. (Netscape or Internet Explorer are examples of popular browsers, which are the tools that allow you to view information on the Internet.) However, if you only have a chosen or assigned topic to go on—that is, you don’t know the names of any web sites about your topic—you’ll be relying on search engines like Google, Yahoo! and AltaVista (to name a few of the popular ones) to help you find things to look at. Using search engines feels like using a library’s catalog or databases: you enter a few words describing what you’re looking for, hit “Enter,” and wait for the results. 

Each search engine has its own special features, its own tips and tricks. However, anything that we could include here that describes or compares search engines would be out-of-date by the time this page makes it into our web site. Fortunately, Greg R. Notess, a search engine expert, does us all a great service by maintaining a web site called Search Engine Showdown, which can be found at www.searchengineshowdown.com. Here, you can compare and contrast the features of current, popular search engines. It’s also a good place to start if you’d like to learn more about how search engines work.

If you’d rather not wade through the jargon at Search Engine Showdown, try Google. Located at www.google.com, Google is a search engine that works quite well for academic research. Google is easy to use if you’re new at the whole Internet thing, but also has powerful advanced search options if you’re a more experienced surfer. It also does a good job of “relevance ranking,” which simply means that it’s good at figuring out which sites may be good for you based on the words you enter.

How Good is this Site? Establishing Credibility on the Internet

Again, the most important part of conducting academic research on the Internet is taking the time to evaluate the websites you find. Don’t settle for the first 5 that pop up onto your screen unless they seem credible and will really and truly help you narrow and research your topic. You won’t know this unless you take the time to examine them thoroughly. So, what should you be looking for? Consider the triangle below:

There are three elements at work when you do research on the Internet (or any research, for that matter). There’s an author—an individual person, group of people, or even an entire organization—who has information (or even a product) to share with the world at large. He, she, or they create a web site in order to convey this information, and publish it where anyone with access to an Internet-connected computer can read it. Then there’s you, on the receiving end. You need some information—whether it’s dates and details of a battle for a history paper, or what might be a fair selling price for your car—so you go online and start hunting. Below are rules of thumb and tips for considering the three points of the triangle.                   

AUTHOR

First and foremost, who is (or are) the person (or people) who are providing you with this information for free, and why are they providing it for free? Do they want to sell you a service or product, influence your thinking on a controversial issue, or simply make their own research efforts known? The last of these three scenarios is the most likely to result in a good example of a credible Internet resource. Look for an expert (a doctor, professor, etc.) who expresses a balanced point-of-view that is backed up by checkable facts or data. 

Author rule of thumb:

Treat a web page like a television commercial. Make sure it really convinces you before you rush out and buy the product. If it feels pushy or fake, don’t “buy” it, and definitely don’t let it make it to your Works Cited list or Bibliography.  

Some things to look for:

Hints for searching:

Find books in the Library Catalog, and electronic books and articles in the Electronic Resources about your topic BEFORE you turn to the Web. (Remember, the Library Catalog and Electronic Resources are available over the Internet, which makes them just as convenient to use.) See if you can determine from the Library Catalog or Electronic Resources the names of people or organizations who would be experts on your subject. Then, search the Internet for those names. Consider the example above of researching a good selling price for your car: if you know that the Kelley Blue Book is a good way to figure out how much your car is worth, try seeing if it’s available on the Internet. (It is.) Experts who publish reliable information on paper often publish it on the Web as well. 

WEB SITE

You can tell a lot about a web site by just looking at it. Even if you can’t always judge a book by its cover, you can often judge a web site by its home page. The URL (Uniform or Universal Resource Locator) or address of a web site will often tell you where the information comes from. For example, from HCC’s home page URL, www.howardcc.edu, the “.edu” ending tells you that it’s a school, and you can guess from there that “cc” might stand for “community college.” “Howard,” then, is probably the name of the school. Pay special attention to the three-letter endings of URLs, like .edu, .com, .org, .gov, etc. Keep in mind that a .com site is often looking to sell something. A .org site is sponsored by a non-profit organization, and .gov indicates a site sponsored by the government. These three-letter codes can appear in the middle of a long URL, too. For example, if you go to Google's homepage and click the "About Google" link, you can watch the URL change from "www.google.com" to "www.google.com/intl/en/about.html." This simply means that you’ve moved from Google's main page to a sub-page.

Another element to consider is the design of a web site. A well-designed web page is simple, easy to use, complete, and regularly maintained. There is a lot of money in professional web design, and large companies are more likely to afford a flashy site with bells and whistles. Don’t take this as a measure of the reliability of the information; there are plenty of “home made” sites that are perfectly credible. On the other hand, sloppy design might mean sloppy research. After all, if you go through all of the trouble of really researching a subject, why do a poor job when it comes to presentation?

Web site rule of thumb:

If it looks like it was thrown together in an afternoon in somebody’s basement, there’s a good chance that it was; if it looks like a flashy advertisement, there’s a good chance that it is. 

Some things to look for:

Hints for searching:

In some search engines—Google, for example—you can limit your results to web pages that end in .edu, .org, .gov. This will limit your authors to teachers and professors, non-profit organizations, and the federal government. You may or may not believe what these groups have to tell you, but they are people who need to be careful about what they publish for the world to view. Also, be sure to explore all pages and links in a site. Get a feel for how it is designed and how the information in it is organized. Does the author do a good job of presenting?

YOU   

You’re the most important corner of the triangle. No single factor about an author or the web site can tell you automatically whether a site is good or not-so-good; it’s up to use to exercise your critical thinking skills as you do your research. Also, make sure that the sites you choose are appropriate for your assignment—that is, college-level research. A good site that is perfectly suitable for light reading, entertainment, or sales purposes may not be in-depth enough for an academic paper. Keeping the author and web site suggestions above in mind will help you choose.

You rule of thumb:

If you pick the first 5 sites that you come across and don’t really look at them, it’s unlikely that you’ll get as good a grade as possible on your paper.

Hints for Searching:

Before you get on the Internet and start searching, make yourself a short checklist of what you would hope to find on a reliable web site about your topic. What might a good and a not-so-good site on your subject look like? If you’re researching a medical topic, you might decide that you want your author to be a health care professional such as a nurse, doctor, etc., and sponsored by a hospital, private practice, or medical association. If you’re looking for dates about important battles in history, see if a college history professor has posted information about them on his or her school web page. Stick to your checklist, and compromise on your criteria as little as possible. And by all means, add to your checklist as you discover more good qualities on good web sites.

Happy surfing!