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Has Research Largely Become, Search Only?

The Fast-Food Information Age: We Are What We Read, Michael Ross – November 10, 2008

  • “…teachers and students—whose jobs and degrees depend on trust and accuracy—in addition to ordinary Internet users, turn to search engines (e.g., Google, Yahoo) as their first, and perhaps only, destination for information. This behavior, the automatic reliance on Internet search engines as the primary (if not only) way to get the information we need, apparently has been thoroughly ingrained in us, in spite of the likelihood that the best or most reliable information may not be freely available on the Internet, but rather behind firewalls on premium sites that have been written, researched, vetted, and compiled by scholars, researchers, and other knowledge professionals. In addition, many, if not all, of these sites are available to anyone with a library card; but clearly they are underused, either because people don’t know about them or because the temptation to use Google and the ease of doing so trump other benefits.”
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