You hear it from your professors, and you hear it from your librarians. We keep asking you to find “scholarly” articles using the library’s databases, but you’d rather just use Google. Am I right?
There is a reason that we keep steering you toward Academic Search Complete, JSTOR, SocINDEX, and ERIC. These databases help you find reliable information written by experts in their fields. What will Google find? Lots of information: some that’s realiable and some that, well, isn’t.
Most of the websites you’ll find using Google are not scholarly, peer-reviewed resources. If your assignment requires them, you will want to search one of the library’s databases instead. If you need help determining if a resource is peer-reviewed or not, just ask! We are happy to help you.
Did you know that in our online catalog, as well as many of our databases, you can start with a simple, Google-like search and refine your results? We think if you give them a try, you will find that the databases and the catalog are not as difficult to use as you might think.
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