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by Michele Blacksberg

Created on: March 12, 2009   Last Updated: April 29, 2009

Students today are part of the internet age. Book only research was the mainstay of an era that is slowly departing. Life moves forward and so do the tools that perform the tasks we need, everything keeping in step with the technological advancements of the time.

The real argument concerning students using books versus using the internet for research is that information in hard print is perceived as being substantiated, more solid and supportable. The main difficulty with the mass of information on the internet is that while the data seems readily available, it is rarely footnoted with the source and can be of questionable reliability.

How does one find and determine accurate and true resources for their research that provides the sense of solidness a book represents? This is the core of what students need to learn and understand.

Robert Harris has written an article titled, Evaluating_internet_ resources . Condensed, the basic guidelines are below.

The CARS Checklist (Credibility, Accuracy, Reasonableness, Support)

1. Credible: Is the source credible? Who is reporting the information?

2. Accuracy: Some information is timeless but most is dependant upon when it was created?

3. Reasonable: Is the information unbiased? Does it make sense?

4. Support: Are there statistics or a bibliography to back a claim?

In the days before the web, research was done the "old fashion way." If a book wasn't available on the subject being researched, a trip to the "stacks" was required to find a reference book under that subject of study. Searching was done by key term such as "heart disease" and under that subject were a list of magazines with their dates and issue. Next, aisles of magazines were wandered through, some bound in large books to hold a year's worth, and the magazine needed was located and pulled out. After finding the article, the student would visually peruse the pages optimistically hoping the desired information would be there. It was an extremely slow and tedious process.

Many types of research today would be difficult if not impossible if we relied on just books and did not use the internet. As pointed out in the CARS checklist, old information becomes un-useful and inaccurate especially if the topic is a contemporary one. By the time a book is published the information may already be out of date. Credible sources of current information in my field of healthcare, can be found using topic specific search engines such as "EBSCOhost" and "CINAHL which gather data from health/medical journals and reduce weeks of hunting to just a few hours.

Books will never be replaced as a primary source of reliable research. However, information today moves fast and books in print will become part of an era left behind much the way records have become CDs, film has become digital and square roots calculations are done entirely on a calculator instead of paper. What hopefully will not be lost is students' desire for real knowledge that is supported by good research instead of accepting something as true because it sounded true, was found on a cool website or was seen on "you tube."

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