23.1. Finding Sources for Research W8.

This week, we're conducting researching for our "How does a book become a movie?" blog post.
So, how do you find information on your topic?

When most Americans want information quickly on a topic, they head off to Wikipedia and look up the entry. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that is written, edited, and evaluated by its own users. This has made it the biggest encyclopedia in human history very quickly, but has also made some people in schools very nervous. Many teachers do not let you cite Wikipedia in your papers. When asked why, they say that Wikipedia is unreliable because you don't know who wrote it, or its changeable from day to day. They reasons are wrong -- after all, you don't know who wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica or the calorie counts on the McDonald's menu anymore than you know who wrote a Wikipedia entry.

However, you still shouldn't cite Wikipedia. Why? You shouldn't cite any encyclopedias at all in real research. Encyclopedias are tertiary sources, meaning that they take secondary sources and digest them and put them in an easy location. Encyclopedias are meant to get you the very basics on a subject. Encyclopedia make many mistakes because they attempt to write about everything. This isn't me stating my opinion, either, it's me stating Wikipedia's opinion.

For research, only primary and secondary sources are considered to be good enough to use.

To find information on your topic, here are Five Things to know:
1. You should use wikipedia first to start your research. Go to the entry or entries that have to do with your topic and scan through them. At the bottom, if the entry is good, there will be a great many links that you can use to do your research. These links will be to valid secondary sources. Use them. That's what Wikipedia is for.

2. Don't mistake Google for research. While Google, of course, is a great tool for finding information, it is not considered to be a site where research happens. Think of Google as the elevator in the library, you wouldn't say that you used the elevator in the library as research, you used it to get to your research.

3. Once you get to a site that has information that you might want to use, run it through a checklist to make a judgment about how reliable the site is. Here are the questions I would ask:

• Is the author identified?
• Is there a date on it?
• Is the website to a publication that exists outside the internet? (To check this, find the name of the site itself, and make a new search to see if you can subscribe to it. If you can, that's good.)
• Are there citations at the bottom to other websites or books?

4. Lastly, consider the domain (the letters after the site in the URL, like ".com" or ".gov"). If a site is .com, then the goal of the site is to make money. For a magazine, that's fine, but you are going to learn good information about astrology at astrology.com? You're not -- they are going to want to sell you products related to astrology, so they won't mention that most humans think that astrology is nonsense. Consider the organization that is bringing you this information. I don't mean political bias or anything bad -- it's fine for a company to try and sell their products -- that's what a company should do.

5. Remember, not all information exists where you can find it, either. If you look for something and can't find it, it might mean it's not there. You may have to change your topic somewhat or totally. Another reason that research is the hardest thing to do well in school is that you have to work for a while without producing anything for your final paper. It can be frustrating.