by Kate

It’s true.

Now, you may ask yourself, why do I need the library when I have the Internet?

True. But the library does have things you cannot get anywhere else. Some examples: special collections, government documents, periodicals and bound journals (and there‘s more!). Crucially, university libraries grant you electronic access to full text academic journals not available via the web.

Source Evaluation. As an instructor, the most frequent question I encounter from students is simply this: How can I find solid resources for the paper I have to write? Here are some quick tips to get you steered in the right direction.

Scholarly versus Popular. You can tell if it’s a scholarly publication—be it a book, article or website—if there is a bibliography and if the credentials of the author are clearly for real, and pertinent to the topic at hand. (On the other hand, don’t get me wrong: a person doesn’t have to have a bunch of college degrees to be able to teach you something. You’ll never hear me tell you that if the author’s list of credentials is as long as my arm they are therefore smart, a reliable source, or better than anyone else. Oh, heck no.)

Objectivity. As you read the piece, decide whether the author is giving you their opinion or basing what they say on facts or research. Are they trying to sell you something?. There are a whole bunch of factors that determine whether you can place confidence in research conclusions. But that is a whole other blog topic. When I was working on my thesis, I had a college professor who liked to say, Statistics are like people: they can be tortured until they tell you what you want to hear.* The message here is to be cautious about taking research at face value.

Internet Sources. Remember that on the Web anyone who has access to a computer can get published (that includes me!). While there are many worthy sites that can provide you with tons of information on the internet, the fact remains that it can be more difficult to ascertain their validity. Some instructors may be under-impressed if you rely too heavily on internet sources, so you may be doing your grade a favor by finding some other avenues that support your thesis. (Perhaps here is a good place to mention that I’ve earned my MA in Counseling Psychology and am a published author and have taught college courses?)

With the avalanche of information available to us through technological sources, we are called on more than ever to exercise sound evaluation of the sources that we rely on. Even as electronic media grows there remains a place for libraries in the intellectual community.

*Famous Corollary: Beware of statistics and averages. The average person has one breast and one testicle. -Des McHale