Where should I look? How should I search?
The problem isn't that there isn't enough information out there - it is usually that there is too much and it takes a great deal of time to sift out the good quality information from the bad. Fortunately there are ways to filter this, such as:
Image adapted from original by Denise McQuillen from Pixabay. Quote widely attributed to Mitchell Kapor, founding Chair of Mozilla which created the web browser FireFox.
Source: https://www.library.yale.edu/researcheducation/pdfs/Searching_Evaluating_Resources.pdf
Key Point: Only use the general internet for scholarly research if you have plenty of time to wade through irrelevant information and to evaluate sources for authority, accuracy and purpose. Once you have learnt how to use databases effectively, they will save you a great deal of time in the long run.
Search Tips
Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay
Do you need to use the general internet?
Given all the excellent sources above, you may well find that you don't need to search the wider internet at all. If you do, you need to take care that you are finding scholarly, reputable information. We recommend CRAAP Testing any source you find on the general internet before using it because of the huge range of reliability, authority, accuracy and purpose in internet sources.
Searching for academic sources on the internet:
There are a number of search engines that search academic sources, one
of the most user-friendly and versatile is Google Scholar (others include Microsoft Academic, and a variety of more subject-specific search engines). It is very clear where PDF downloads are freely available, the format makes it easy to trace where an article has been cited and there is a useful advanced search facility (which you can find by using the "three lines" menu button to the left of the page - see image to the right here).
Note that Google Scholar identifies academic papers by their format, not by where they come from, so results may vary wildly in quality. Also, it often returns large numbers of results where the full-text is hidden behind a paywall, which can be frustrating.
Videos
Both Toni Morrison or Margaret Atwood have appeared in a considerable number of interviews about their work, and most search engines will allow you to limit your search results to videos.
See the Citing and Referencing LibGuide for information on citing videos.
You might want to use this document to keep a record of keywords that have been helpful in your search.
Use this instead if you are working with a small number of sources and want space for detailed notes. You might choose to use something like this alongside the Annotated Bibliography to make notes on particularly important sources, or you may not use it at all.
Use this to rubric assess resources for Currency, Relevance, Accuracy, Authority and Reliability. This is less important for resources from our Subscription Databases than from the general internet, because they are more likely to be scholarly sources.
