SHAWNEE STATE UNIVERSITY ::

Research Strategies

:: The Library

:: Search Strategy

:: Topic

:: The Web

:: Scholarly?

:: Reference

:: Catalogs

:: Articles

:: Databases I

:: Databases II

:: Databases III

:: Databases IV

:: Quick Search

:: Evaluation

:: Plagiarism

:: Citing

The Web
The Internet is a great place to find information quickly, but a library might be the better place to locate information for your assignment.

Background Information?
In a Google or Yahoo! search on the Web, you might find exactly what you want, but how will you determine if the information is accurate, unbiased, current, and complete?

Web resources such as Wikipedia may be a good starting point for some research, but you will need to verify the information they provide in a reputable resource such as an article from an established subject-area encyclopedia (like Encyclopedia of the Life Sciences) or an authoritative magazine (like Newsweek) or journal (like The New England Journal of Medicine.) The same holds true for information that you find in a commercial website, an organization's page, a blog, or a personal site. You will need to verify its credibility.

Although all information must be evaluated, the library's online resources are produced by established, authoritative publishers who work diligently to assure the reliability, accuracy, and objectivity of the information that they provide.

Articles on the Web?
Professors often require students to find authoritative information from magazine, journal, or newspaper articles. Although some articles are available on the Internet, many of the best web sites either require a subscription or make users pay for individual articles.

The Library provides online articles via research databases. The Library pays the subscription fees, and students get the articles for free.

Many more online articles are available via the library's research databases than are available via a Google or Yahoo! search. Clark Memorial Library offers free articles from more than 18,000 periodicals.

Books and Other Documents?
Many contemporary government documents, reports from not-for-profit institutions, and some books that have gone out-of-copyright (published prior to 1923) are available online via a web search. Current books, proprietary business information, and professional or scholarly resources, however, usually are not accessible for free.

Library catalogs provide access to government documents and reports -- and to contemporary e-books. Additionally, research databases often provide specialized information of interest to students and researchers: for example, business databases provide industry profiles, market research reports, proprietary company data, etc., while medical databases provide evidence-based care sheets, research instruments, CEU practice information, and other resources of use to health care professionals. Of course, you can often get this information via a Google search -- if you are willing to pay for it!

Selected Web Resources?
Librarians have selected outstanding resources for each of the program areas at SSU and placed them on Clark Memorial Library’s Web Resources pages. Librarians have also created directories of web resources like The Librarian's Internet Index and online libraries like the Internet Public Library.

The Invisible Web?
Search engines identify only a small percentage of the pages on the web, and different search engines search different parts of the web. (Although compared with other search engines Google searches the largest number of pages, it is still worthwhile to repeat a search in another search engine.) Those pages that are not crawled or indexed on Google, Yahoo!, or other search engines are called the invisible web. You may need to use a specialty search engine, such as ClinicalTrials.gov, Scirus, or SearchEDU.com or a directory such The Librarian's Internet Index or to delve extensively into a website on your own to find the particular information that you need.

To go to the next page in the Research Strategies tutorial, click Scholarly?

Need Help?

Get help via IM, email (Reference_Services@Shawnee.edu), or by phoning (740.351.3321).

If you prefer face-to-face assistance, stop by the Clark Memorial Library Reference Counter or schedule a Research Consultation with a Reference Librarian.

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