LESSON 1
Role of Reference Sources/Tools in the Research Process
After finishing your poetry class, you race to the library to do research on the 18th century poet you have been studying in class. (OK, so maybe you don't race; you stroll.)Should you limit yourself to information about the poet on the Internet in the comfort of your own home?
While some information is best found on the Internet (and some information is only found on the Internet), most information exists in print only. This is likely to be so for many years to come because it is not reasonable to get all the written information in the world digitized and on the Internet within the next few years. There is, also, the reality that information on the Internet varies greatly in quality and reliability while information selected for libraries has been reviewed by librarians and therefore assures a certain level of quality and stability.
