7. Finding sources

You should know by now that sources are the places where you get information about your topic, such as books, magazines, journals, Internet articles, and so on. As I wrote earlier, information found in Wikipedia is not totally reliable, so don't use it except to get a general overview of your topic. Any website with a ".com" address is a commercial site (it's a business), so researchers don't use such sites either as the information can't be trusted to be objective. Web addresses ending in ".edu" or ".gov" are considered to be reliable however, as they belong to universities or governments. ".org" may be fine too, depending on the organization and the topic you're researching.

Google Scholar is a good source of academic articles. There are other search engines besides Google though, and they will provide different results (for example, try http://www.altavista.com). Metacrawlers, which search many search engines at once, can be useful too(http://www.metacrawler.com). Separating key words in your search with OR, AND, or NOT (you must use capital letters) can help you find the kind of information you're looking for. This is called boolean searching. If you interested in learning how it works, read the explanation at http://www.internettutorials.net/boolean.asp

This should be enough information to help you find material on the Internet. If you're interested in a more in-depth (Power Point) explanation, click on the Internet Searches link to the right, and then the blue "Wading Through the Web" link.

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