Monday, May 1, 2017

Writing Research Papers: The Library or the Internet?


Based on a recent poll, most students use the Internet first, verses the library, to begin start their research for writing assignments. However, is this because of convenience or because students feel they can find better information online? If students' first move is to use Google, then they perhaps don't really know how to use the Internet effectively because Google shows results based on link popularity without performing a content analysis on the actual information (i.e., is the information reliable, authoritative, and bias-free). So, what are your opinions on this topic? Can the library provide better information, or is just a matter of helping students really search the Internet with better skills to evaluate the information? Share your ideas.

16 comments:

  1. When I started studying in the late 90s the Internet Hype was rising and almost at its top. Certainly, it is useful and necessary to use the internet for any kind of research. The reasons are that it is quick, easy, always available and in many cases you get a good overview of the topic within a few minutes.

    On the other hand, there were some good reasons why the Internet could always only be a starting point or a springboard for research. The main reason is that most high qualitative research articles are not for free in the internet; you have to pay for these contents. Then it is cheaper - especially for students - to go to the library. The second point is that I found it always very annoying to read long and difficult articles from the sreen. And, point #3, when you are at the point where you have 100 or more articles that you need for your thesis it is easier to sort them as hard copy.

    At my university, by the way, they showed us where to find and how to work with academic/scientific databases in the internet which are much more appropriate for researches than the google hit list.

    And finally I would like to mention that it is not a secret that many students copy and paste whole articles and assignments from the internet. I am very glad that I was always ambitious enough to do the all the work on my own. It really helped me lot in my professional life and still does. This was very good training in multi-tasking, setting milestones, meet deadlines etc.

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  2. Many institutions limit access to their online information. Making this information available will be an asset to all.

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  3. looks quite a great post, it's having good information for research analysis. great job

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  4. Libraries are useful and helpful for people.When you want to search something,you go to the library.Also your teacher gives homework,you do it in the library.

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  5. libraries are useful our life because they have many information.when I want to learn something I go to libraries.

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  6. The library is very important for us.Most people like to study at ınternet,but I thınk we should use lıbrary

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  7. The library is a very good place to have information about everything,so we should use library every time.

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  8. I like library ,but I often check out books

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  9. I think it's good to continue doing research at the Library because you are reading and searching the information you need to make a report. If you find the information at the internet you only copy and paste the information and don't really read what is the report about. So I think is important to use both resources to complement the information and make a real good report.

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  10. I reckon that is better research our information at the library because the information that we research in the internet could be wrong and we only copy that information without read it. Research at the library involves searched, read and contrasted the information.

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  11. Library is must served to any student. Both library and internet is essential, in the library we can get any information which we need. Library which has a good served is better than the internet, because we could attend to work and laying directly as a the real internet (not illusion world internet).

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  12. When you are looking for information, you have two options: go to a library or look on internet. These two options have advantages and disadvantages.
    If you go to a library, probably you are not going to find the information in the first book that you read; you will have to look i many books and take the information from all of these. At the beginning this process could be very long and tedious, but at the end it is going to be beneficial because you will have learned how to find information and to make a summary.
    If you use internet, you just have to write the title of the information that you are looking for and many links with the information will appears, but you will have to check if the internet page is reliable, and you cannot copy and paste the information that is what some students do when they are using the internet. The idea of this option is reading the internet page to get an explanation of the topic and then write your opinion, but you cannot settle with reading only the first link that you selected because you will not learn how to find information and make a summary.

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  13. During my studies at the university , I was depending completely on the internet search. But not just Google, basically I was searching for books and scientific papers.
    At the final year , I had to make a report and I searched on the internet but I can't find a certain required book so I had to go to the library to see that book and take the information.
    It was an interesting experience as the library atmosphere give you a push to read an search far away of the disturbance of social media and other things on the internet.

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  14. María.

    Writing asignments is a task that can be copied from any resource that you find out, even if it is from the internet or looking for information at the internet. The issue here is how students analize every single detail on form or content in each paper, book,journal they read.

    When using information from internet, of course students will find uncountable resources, but one disadvantage is that not all that information is reliable, and autorized; so students need to develop skills to validate the information. Students coul also learn how to surf on specific links, places or e-libraries.

    On the other side, information found out in resources from a library is complety reliable, but it will be more difficult for students to read every single detail from the content table to see if that is the book they need to search on.

    To conclude, both of these ways of investigation are useful and require skills to do a good job. Additional doing a task depends on students honesty and responsability; and how teachers score students' papers or asignments takes an important role on it.

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  15. If you know have to use the net correctly, you will find better information. On the one hand you have all the librarys on the world with only one "click" and also you have most information that is not available in differents library. The issue is have the abilite to select the correct knowledge and with the appropiate references. On the other hand in the library you can talk with qualifiers workers, they can give you advices and guide you throught your research.

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  16. Well, internet will always be my resources due to the fastest and free to search every subject for me to learn and study.

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Thanks for posting a comment. I appreciate your interesting in sharing your ideas.

Best,

Randall

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