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Riding the Information Tidal Wave Thanks to more than 350 million pages of information, data and graphics posted on the World Wide Web on thousands of topics, conducting research for a term paper has become a vastly different process than it was a few years ago. The Internet is now the place students start their search for information, say faculty members. Walking to a library to pore over card catalogues, microfiche and computerized search files, until recently the first step in the research process, is sometimes a last resort. "The first place they go to is the Internet," says Daniel Horowitz, Sylvia Dlugasch Bauman Professor in American Studies. "My students use it all the time." "New students often have no familiarity with libraries," says Professor of English Language and Literature Douglas Patey. The temptations to research via the Internet are many. It's quick and easy with the assistance of Internet search engines, and students can download an abundance of information without leaving their rooms. And with the plethora of data posted -- thousands of new pages every day -- facts and figures on almost any topic are available to all. But Internet research has some significant drawbacks, say instructors. For one, a large percentage of information-no one knows exactly how much-on the Web is questionable as to its accuracy and reliability. Therefore, it's dangerous to rely solely on Internet materials as documentable sources, Horowitz says. Students sometimes use information found there "without knowledge of the context in which it was produced," he adds. In the posting of historic literature,
for example, Patey says the Web has been very unreliable. "The
initial input of literature on the Internet has been very messy,"
he says. During a Jane Austen seminar he taught recently, he
says his students searched the Net for information. "Students
found a lot there," he says, "and 99 percent of it
was junk." Instructors say they haven't, by any means, been overrun with incorrect information gleaned from the Net by Smith students. They try to teach their students to be critical and skeptical of information regardless of where it's found, they say. "Is everything you see in a book accurate?" asks Horowitz. "We train students to be suspect of any information they see, whether it's from a book or the Internet." For now, the best use of the Internet
in research is as a referencing mechanism, says Patey. "Find
what you need, then go get it in hard copy," he says-at
the library.-ESW |
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