Aug 15th, 2008
Aug 15th, 2008
In elementary school whenever I was working on a research paper my teachers always warned me to limited the use Internet sources because they were not credible. With distain they said, “Anyone can just write something on the Internet.”
When I was in college, teachers permitted us to use up to 5 Internet sources on our term papers. While they allowed us more freedom to use websites, professors still gave priority to .org or .net and other non-.com top level domains. This prejudice towards most of the World Wide Web made finding sources difficult, and as a result I had to resort to the tried and true Dewey Decimal system at the library.
Is there ever going to be a point where Internet sources are just as credible as published articles? Are we already here?
I have noticed a slight evolution and acknowledgement of the Internet as a information source, but I would still expect preference given to published documents because (in theory) there is a greater barrier of entry. Is this right? Should published works be given more authority simply because they are bound and tangible?
One of the most difficult assignments I had in college was actually answering a question that could not be found on the internet (What do 5 red stars above a door symbolize in China?). The whole point was to make the class utilize other resources that have been left in the past due to the internet. We, not thinking, obviously started our search online only to find that the professor was correct and it could not be found there (this was 3 years ago, so it might be there now.)
It then took weeks of trips to the library, sifting through hundreds of lexis nexis articles, and eventually finding a professor in Boston who specialized in Chinese studies to help us get an A.
The point here is that I would love to see the internet become a source that is as credible as a published document (and I think it will), but we need to (and teach) that there are other places to complete research.