How to do Online Research

Today when you’re writing a paper, it’s really different from when our parents wrote papers. If you make an effort to avoid it, it’s probably possible to get through a whole university career without even going to the library today, depending on your degree. While never visiting your school \ local library is definitely not what we’re recommending, it’s something that has come into play with advances in internet sources. You can find lots of great sources online. But if you’re not careful, it’s easy to run into trouble. With so much information a “google” away, it’s important to know what sources are academic ones, and what sources belong in the garbage can.

The number one error first year students make is that they do not understand how to do online research. You don’t find academic sources through simple google searches. Wikipedia is not an academic source. Academic sources are peer reviewed by other academics, and often have to be edited numerous times before they are actually published.

To find these academic sources, there are a number of tools you can use. For history, here are four databases to check out: Jstor; Ebscohost; Project Muse; and Google Scholar.

These are databases where you can search for academic journals \ articles that will be helpful for your essay. Just enter your topic into the keyword search, and you’ll be provided with lots of articles. The next step is learning how to narrow down your search. Here are some hints for narrowing your search within these sources:

- narrow it by date \ years

- narrow it by more specific keywords

The articles that you find through searching these databases are not web articles, but published academic journals that have been uploaded to the internet. They are great tools for academic research, and for speeding up the time it takes to do research. But remember when you’re doing online research, it’s the academic articles that you want, not just something you’re found while searching the net.