One problem with students today is that they don’t pay attention to what’s credible or not anymore. The main culprit? Wikipedia (and all the other free encyclopedia cites on the Web). While Wikipedia claims that their articles’ accuracy is just as par with the Encyclopedia Britannica. And there’s also definitely one advantage to the system - articles get update as soon as anything important happens. Still that doesn’t safeguard articles from being vandalized by crazy high school kids with too much time in their hands or some pseudo-academics who have nothing to do but surf the web in the buff.

Doing research is slowly becoming a lost art for many students. Many say that libraries will eventually become extinct because of Wikipedia. No, they won’t. It still isn’t refereed by experts in the field to be a credible source of scholarly information. So for those students who would want a credible and scholarly research, here’s a quick guide to doing library research.

However, just to maximize the use of technology. You may use Wikipedia to get overviews and other sources (as an alternative to checking out encyclopedias and atlases). Instead of going through catalogs, use Google Scholar and other online databases if you want to. If there’s one section that you can really consult with Wikipedia it would be the References and Further Reading sections. And mind you that you should give importance printed material such as books and journals.

Remember that published and refereed materials (such as journals in specific fields) are the best materials to cite and quote. Use Wikipedia as a gateway.