Blog Post #4

The hardest thing about finding information is finding really specific information because if you are looking for really specific information then you probably can only find it in one place. If you can only find that specific information in one place then the question becomes is that one source reliable? Now that is something that I have problems with on every research project I have whether or not the sources I find are reliable or not. This is where this Library Research class helped me to find what sources are really reliable and what sources are not. Also, this class also showed me what the true nature of Google which takes money from people to bring their hits up and it does not really show all hits that it says it found. Knowing this about Google will affect the way I search for information on Google because the information that shows up is biased in the sense that Google does not look for the best information that goes with your search item but actually gets paid by the companies or websites to bring their items up. Another piece of useful information brought to be by this class is when we spoke about plagiarism. Now I had an idea about what plagiarism was but I didn’t know much can go wrong with citing sources. The things that I considered as not plagiarism were actually plagiarism such as summarizing a piece, saying where it came from and nothing else. In actuality you need to provide a works citied page, internal citation and mention the piece. In the end this class helped me prepare for future research projects and readied me for college. 

Blog Post #3

Even though the internet is a great tool that can get information to a person in an instant I don’t believe that books will go away because books contain information that one may not be able to find in another place. Like we saw in class, the internet is full of illegitimate sources that are there to trip someone up. For example, everyone goes to Wikipedia to find information about anything they want but some people don’t know that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone so someone can go on it and change a fact to screw someone up. Books are needed for this purpose to make sure that someone doesn’t screw up a fact. In my opinion I don’t really believe in the creditability of purely internet based things, such as Wikipedia. The internet is not a place full creditable sources, in other words the internet is not a library. Now for academic paper one is most likely to get mark down by a teacher or professor for choosing a non-creditable internet source, whereas if one goes to the library finds a book on the topic. Now what I believe that the Library of Health and Sciences offering with some books the option to see the book online is a great thing because it allows the user to find creditable sources online. This source adds the convenience of the internet with the credibility of a library. The internet is a wonderful tool but it is not the best tool for someone to find credible sources.