Writing a research paper at any level of education, whether it be in high school or in college is strenuous to say the least. To begin with, the student must pick a topic that will have a reasonable amount of information to reference to. Next, the student must find reliable sources to back up his thesis, but who are we to say what is and is not a reliable source. Many would argue that text books are the most reliable source, but can you argue that there is not any type of bias in text books? Or perhaps one might argue that a editorial written by a popular author would be a safe alternative, but it goes without saying that even our most popular writers often have a personal bias. If this theory is correct, then who is to say that a student cannot use a source such as the internet for information?
Books and literture have been the main source for information for hundreds of years, but is the Internet with all of its faults any worse of a resource. The argument against the use of Internet articles in research papers is that they are often unreliable and can not always be attributed to one source, but are books any different. If I were to use a search engine to find information on baseball, I would receive thousands of different links which would lead me to articles with different opinions and different interpretations of the game. Now if I were to walk into a library and search for books regarding the game of baseball, I would once again be given hundreds of different options to choose. One book might explain baseball as an American pastime, while another might tell me how baseball is a corrupt game run by millionaire playboys. There may be a difference in interfaces, but the student would be receiving the very same results.
In a recent study, it was found that forty million Americans have used the internet as a primary source of information (Pew internet/American Life Project 2006). Now of course there are many sites in which information is obviously tainted by personal bias, but on the other hand there are many websites in which we can find sound and useful information. Much like books, the internet certainly has it's widly bias sources of information, but I think we can all agree that the world of text books has the same problem. We could easily pick the internet sites and text books that are way in left field, but what we fail to talk about are the resources that can actually be helpful.
So what can we do to make the Internet a more helpful tool? Well, much like the books we choose to read, we need to be careful. If I were looking for a resource to help write a paper on baseball, would I chose a book that was titled "The game of baseball"? Or would I choose to go with a book titled "Why baseball is for idiots"? I think the answer is fairly simple, but we fail to see that it all depends on our own discretion. It is true that some Internet resources are useless and unreliable, but we can also say the same for books.