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Finding Relevant Information

Keeping all of these cautions in mind, how do you go about finding relevant and reliable information on the internet?

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Research Tools

How do you go about finding information relevant to your topic on the internet?

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Please select an answerIs Wikipedia the most reliable source on the web? No, it's just the most popular, which is why searches on Google often point you towards it.It can work, if you are careful to define your search terms. Remember that Google lists sites by the number of links to them, i.e. their popularity, which may have no relation at all to their reliability.To be more exact, the library webpage, which includes links to *reliable* internet resources for different subject areas.What did you have in mind? Department handbooks and webpages often point you towards *reliable* internet resources, as well as giving more detailed advice about how to use the web for research.
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Wikipedia is now one of the most commonly used research tools on the internet - but it's actually a bit problematic as a source for university-level study.

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What's Wrong With Wikipedia?

How are the entries on Wikipedia put together?

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Wikipedia is 'written collaboratively by volunteers from around the world'. More or less anyone can contribute or edit existing entries; some genuine experts may join in, though mostly they're going to be too busy to bother. The editors will occasionally step in to control the entries on controversial subjects or to bar individuals for breaking the rules too often, but many entries are entirely unmonitored. Many entries are based on an ancient edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, in the hope that at some point someone will take the time to update their obvious errors.

The obvious point: this is not a wholly reliable source. It *may* give you a reasonable idea of the current consensus view (or the consensus view in 1911, if you're using one of the entries based on the out-of-copyright encyclopdia), but you're just as likely to be given one individual's personal view of the topic.

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There are now many sites on the internet which offer copies of coursework essays on different topics, either free or for a fee. If you search for an essay title using Google, you're likely to come across these sites.

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Using Essay Banks

Why should you avoid essay banks like the plague?

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Please select an answerObviously it's only plagiarism if you copy the material or closely paraphrase it. If you do do this, accidentally or not, you will be heavily penalised.Generally true. Even for those sites which claim that all essays on offer received 2.1 or first class marks, the academic judgement of people in Bristol who've looked at such essays is that they are usually 2.2 at best. You're better off doing the work yourself.A university education is not just about getting the grades, it's about learning; copying someone else's work, or drawing on it heavily, doesn't teach you anything. It may be tempting, when you're panicking about getting the work in on time, but it will do you no good even if you're *not* caught.It is indeed, even when lecturers rely on their own academic skills rather than the automatic plagiarism-detecting software that is becoming increasingly common.
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