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University Library

JOURNALISM 190: BEYOND GOOGLE AND WIKIPEDIA (Professors Grefe and Richardson)

Finding and Evaluating Information Sources in the Digital Age -- Fall 2012
Tuesday, 12:20 - 1:15 (Reid 211)

Introduction

By "reference source," I mean an information source which is primarily useful

  • for an introduction or overview of a topic, and/or
  • for a smallish piece of needed information -- a date, a correct spelling, a definition, a number, etc .

It is important that such sources be acceptable and appropriate for academic research and professional research.

There are many guides to the evaluation of online information, such as this one from Cornell.

W&L Online Collections

There are two listings of "reference sources" in our Web site:

  • The more general Reference Resources listings in our site (see option in the column on the left) includes many items which are not subject-specific.
    The section labeled Electronic Reference Book Collections enables you to search through publishers' collection of multiple reference works to which W&L has purchased access.