Chris Nolan - Searching with Google

Google can be a very useful tool for searching the Internet, as long as the user is careful to evaluate the results, and can distinguish good sources from bad. In his presentation, Chris Nolan gave us some good tips for finding results that have academic value. One that I found particularly useful and didn't already know about was the ability to limit results based on what kind of site they are. So, if your looking for academic results, you could try limiting the results to .edu sites or if you want government sites, limit to .gov. This is only an example of the things you can do with Google advanced search options, which can definitely improve your searches. Another thing to consider when looking for academic sources are blogs. While I would never have assumed a blog could be a legitimate academic sources, apparently it is becoming more and more common for researchers and experts in the field to blog about their findings, in which case the blog may actually have academic value. I was surprised by this, but I suppose it makes sense. However, I don't think I'll ever feel comfortable citing a blog as a source in a major paper...