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Summary

Summary

Research is a fun, useful, and often frustrating undertaking. But the more you do it, the better you get. No longer are you bound to use the card catalogs and cumbersome indexing systems used just a generation ago. You have the world at your disposal online. The trick is to verify the accuracy of the information and to make sure that you don’t fall prey to the temptation to call whatever pops up on the first ten Google references “research.”

Resources

General resources for research on the Internet Web Guides—indexed by subject matter; must “drill down” to find more and more specific information

Search Engines—search by subject, keywords or phrases

Metasearch Engines (type once, get results from several search engines at once)

Online encyclopedias, almanacs, yearbooks, news digests—often maintained by universities

Basic information on public traded companies

Key Terms

Boolean logic: a search system using the words “and” “or” and “not” to get more effective results

Primary Source: direct information from a person or organization involved with a topic or issue

Plaigiarism: using someone else’s words or ideas as your own (see www.plagiarism.org)

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