Using the Internet as a source of references

Any school will tell you that first and foremost, you should use their library’s own battery of databases, indices, texts of abstracts and journals, collections of statistics, maps, paintings and photographs, and other resources, often organized by field. All electronic sources are chosen by your school and information professionals for scholarly authority and reliability. The thing is, they are right, and you are also paying for this access as a part of your tuition, so use it as a jumping off point, if not entirely. You will find your library personnel highly approachable and if not, there will be explicit instructions posted everywhere, like through your library’s portal page, which show you how to first find the sources best suited for your search and then how to best search them for the information you want. Your library may even have research guides printed or accessible online for various disciplines and even specific courses. Oftentimes, reference librarians are readily available, at the reference desk, sometimes by e-mail, depending on your school.

Generally, use Web sites and other non-journal and non-print materials from the Internet only to supplement other sources. When you do use them

• Give priority to those that list their sources (so you can verify the information) or at least list an advisory board of professionals who vet the material.
• If the site doesn’t list its sources but still seems serious (i.e.,shows no breeziness, carelessness, or bias, and isn’t a commercial [.com] site), check out the author’s professional position and what else he or she has written, and whether the site has a respectable institutional base or is an outgrowth of a long-standing professional organization. You can also directly e-mail the author about the status of a particular piece of information—or post a query.
• Don’t use as a source a site that gives no author or supervisory editor.
• When the text on a site is subject to change or erasure, and thus may not be consultable by other readers, try to find a more stable source for the information. If you must use it, either print out the text or have the author send it to you as a personal communication—which you can then cite as such and attach to your paper as an appendix. If you include non-journal Internet sources in your paper and you have, or think your reader may have, concerns about their reliability or verifiability, include an explanatory note.

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