The purpose of this page is to help you efficiently search the web for information for your classes.  The fifteen or twenty minutes you will spend studying this page can easily save you hours of search time over a semester.

Please keep in mind that many times, especially for class assignments, the web is not the best source of information.  Before starting your research make sure you are looking in the right place for what you need.  Just as you would not look in a book for yesterday’s sports scores, there are certain types of information the web will not contain. 

• If you are looking for extensive information on a topic, you need BOOKS.  You can ask for books to be mailed to your home address or access the thousands of netLibrary eBooks available to you from your instructor's Library's online resources.
• If you are looking for scholarly studies or detailed research studies, the web might possibly have something, but it is not your best source.  For this kind of material, the best and easiest sources to use are PROFESSIONAL AND SCHOLARLY JOURNALS, and to locate articles in those, you should be using PERIODICAL INDEXES  , such as, the Tennessee Electronic Library.  You can use "General Reference Center" for basic information and "Expanded Academic" for more scholarly information.  You also have access to many other quality databases through your instructor's library.  To find out more about when to use the web, keep reading.

 USING THE WEB FOR RESEARCH

 Some things to remember as you begin your research:

• Everything is not on the web.  Therefore, you cannot expect to do all of the research for a class assignment using the web.
• Everything you find on the web is not free.  Some sites, especially periodicals, charge a fee.
• Do not expect to find what you need quickly.  The web is immense and unorganized.  Also, when you search you may get thousands of results, many of which are irrelevant.
• Not all of the information found on the web is reliable or valuable.  Anyone, from grade school children to the United States government, can put anything on the web.  The result can be information that is inaccurate and unprofessional.  The web is littered with abandoned efforts and out-of-date information.  Do not fall victim to the idea that if the information is found on a computer, it must be accurate.  For more information on evaluating the information you find on the web, click here.

 You CAN expect to find the following material on the web:

• Information on events in progress; current local, national, and international news
• Information on topics frequently updated
• Information on computers, products, businesses, and popular culture
• Pictures -- art, diagrams, maps, costumes, architecture
• Government information – laws, court cases, statistics, important historical documents
• Interactive files – interactive frog dissection, virtual patients, as an expert sites, sites that will map routes for you, etc.
• Files of animations, videos, music, and speeches.  (Your browser will need to have the appropriate attached software for viewing or listening.)
• Reference sources
• Discussion groups for sharing information

For more on this topic, see Using the Web for Research (from Widener University).

GLOSSARY

Internet: the world's largest computer network or, actually, a network of networks, which connects the simplest personal computers and the most sophisticated supercomputers.  Think of solar systems within galaxies.   

World Wide Web:  the Web or WWW; one part of the Internet which allows you to access information through multimedia--graphics (pictures, graphs), video, sound, and text, or print; group of computers throughout the Internet interconnected through links.  

Link: the word (often underlined and in blue) or picture that causes information stored on a distant computer to show up on a user’s computer when the user points and clicks the mouse on that word or picture.  

Web site: each computer on the web containing information accessed through links 

Web page: the screen on which the information is located . 

Home page: a special web page which provides access to other pages on a particular web site.

Browser: software program which makes navigating or surfing the World Wide Web easier.  With a browser you do not have to remember numerous commands to find the pages on the Web; it includes the commands and the buttons to click on.   Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Explorer are examples of browsers.  A basic browser tutorial for Navigator and Explorer is available here.  For more information, use the browser “Help” or see the Netscape or Microsoft web sites. When you obtain Internet access through an Internet service provider, such as America Online, it provides you with one of these browsers or with one of its own.