The internet holds a burgeoning treasure trove of sites for primary research. When searching, keep a few key things in mind.
- Evaluate the source - always evaluate the site for authority, accuracy, objectivity, and currency to make sure the information at the site can be validated.
- Google - be sure to narrow your search by domain (to weed out the commercial sites)
- Going to the "advanced" search option in Google gives you the opportunity to choose your domain, including .edu, .org, or .gov (universities, organizations and US government agency sites, respectively
- Almost anything is always better than HTML. Meaning, finding the digitized original copy of the document, picture, etc is much better than finding an html document that someone merely typed in. While html is better than nothing, it's always best to try to find the original so that you can check for accuracy.
The design of this page was partly adapted from Research: By Course, Subject, or Topic, by University of Arizona Libraries, © 2020 The Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of The University of Arizona, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.