Face it; it's easy and familiar to many people. Also, the Web is a great resource for research because it's so vast; you can find primary documents, news stories, research papers, pictures, movies, sound, government reports, and more. For research you would use the Web to:
You should care about this because you want to use the best resources you can to answer your research questions and learn about your topic.
You can use Google to find highly-reliable information for your research projects and speeches.
We hope this guide will help you learn to use Google as a research tool with skill and confidence.
When you use Google or any social media to get your information how do you know it can be trusted? How do you know it's not biased?
You can feel pretty confident that books you get from the library and articles you find in the library's databases are reliable because someone or some group has checked all the facts and arguments the author made before publishing them. You still have to think about whether or not the book or article is current and suitable for your project but you can feel confident that it is a trustworthy source.
Make sure that each and every source you plan on using in your paper or research assignment passes the CRAAP test.
For more information on evaluating your sources, check out our CRAAP Test: Evaluate Your Sources guide.
Watch the brief video below to see how this works.