Finding information is easy. Making sure the information you find is good information is a little harder, but not once you have a set of skills to help you evaluate it. Below are some resources to help you fine tune your searches and evaluate the results, including Google hints, how to avoid paying for articles, spotting fake news, evaluating sources with the CRAAP test, and where to find resources at WOU.
Google has some built in features to help you narrow down you results to better searches
Commands Google Search recognizes that can limit search results. One of the many tips you will find on the this page: you can type in site:.edu and limit to .edu domains. The domain (i.e. .com) can tell you a lot about a website. Sites can be .com (commercial), .edu (academic institutions), .gov (governmental), .mil (military), or .org (organization - usually non-commercial). Of these, .edu and .gov sites are the most trustworthy.
One of the many tips you will find on the Google Search Help Page: you can limit the date range of items that your search locates
Google Scholar searches for scholarly literature in a simple, familiar way. You can search across many disciplines and sources at once to find articles, books, theses, court opinions, and content from academic publishers, professional societies, some academic web sites, and more. See the Google Scholar inclusion guidelines for more about what’s in Google Scholar
For more precise searching, use Google's Advanced Scholar Search Page, or try these tips:
Find content by an author:
Search for a phrase:
Search by words in the title:
The library offers a lot of ways to get the content you need. You should never have to pay for it!
The WOU library subscribes to a bunch of resources that include high quality information. You can discover some of these by browsing our databases page. You can also use the search box on the main library page to do some basic searching for books, articles, and more!
WOU is a member of Summit, which gives you access to millions of items from other colleges and universities -- delivered right to WOU!
Start your search on the library homepage:
Ebooks can be read on any computer. Learn more about ebooks here.
You can also visit Summit libraries in person: Summit Libraries and locations