First and foremost, do not use Wikipedia. No, seriously. Unless, of course, you’re writing a paper about the unreliability of the information found on the aforementioned website. If you really want to use the Internet to do research, there are a couple of other options. One is to find reliable websites. For example, if you’re writing a paper about Vincent van Gogh, look for information from museum or scholarly websites, and avoid sites that look like they’re just trying to make money.
Another Internet option is to go to your school’s online library resources and find the article databases. There are field-specific databases, such as JSTOR for humanities or Biology Digest for the sciences; educational or career related resources like ERIC; or general or multidiscipline databases such as General OneFile. These online databases have articles written by the top professionals in their field and are usually reliable sources of information.
When searching for information online (whether for websites or on an article database) know your Boolean logic. Boolean keywords are ‘and’, ‘or’, and ‘not,’ and can be used to refine, expand, or exclude things from your search. For example:
When using the keyword ‘and,’ the more variables you include, the more refined your search will become. So if you search, “Vincent van Gogh AND Paul Gauguin AND France,” fewer articles or websites will come up (there are many sites with some of these factors, but only a few with all three).
If you search, “Vincent van Gogh OR Paul Gauguin,” you’ll get many more sites – all of the sites or articles that have either of these names in them will come up.
If you search, “Vincent van Gogh NOT Paul Gauguin,” any sites or articles including van Gogh but not Gauguin will pop up.
Mashable published a very helpful infographic recently on this very subject. Here’s a sample:
When all else fails and you’ve found all you can on the Internet, there’s this building you may have heard of called a library. Believe it or not, libraries still contain a lot of valuable information and can be turned to for further information from books and other research materials they have. Plus they’re quiet and smell of books! (One of the best smells out there.) Librarians are also trained researchers and can be a great resource themselves when you’re stuck or in need of a push in the right direction.
This article is part of a series:
- How to Research a Good Paper
- How to Write a Good Paper
- How to Format a Good Paper
