Chris Nolan - Helpful Hints

Today Chris Nolan, the Assistant Librarian at Trinity, talked about how to find high-quality information on the web.  Did you know 66% of the United States uses the Google search engine?  Google continues to advance its algorithms to make searching easy and quick for users.  One subset of the Google index is called Google Scholar, which enables you to narrow your search to scholarly information that has been reviewed.  I also learned how to use the Advanced Search to further filter results, like by country, language, or domain name.  Looking at the domain names, such as .org, .edu, .gov, and .com, is a good way to know how credible the information is.  I learned that putting a + or - sign in front of a word filters results to either include or exclude specific information, respectively.  For the world's largest digital library of education literature, look for a URL containg .eric or go to http://www.eric.ed.gov/.  Finally, when evaluating articles be sure to check the author's credentials, who is the publisher, the intended audience, objectivity, substantiation for claims, and recency of information.  Good Luck!