Research Databases vs. Websites?!

February 17, 2012

Here's a situation that comes up all too frequently at the library: a student comes in looking for information on a topic that they are researching for an assignment. After doing a little bit of searching, we are able to help them find quite a bit of information that might be useful. Some of the sources are books, and then there are usually several online Research Databases that MCPL subscribes to that also look like they might contain promising information. The student has been told that they are not permitted to use Internet sources for their paper, and therefore decides not to take a look at the online Research Databases to make absolutely sure that they are following the guidelines of their assignment.

If this situation sounds familiar to you, I would encourage you to double check with your teacher or professor and see if he or she will permit you to use online Research Databases as opposed to just websites in general, because there is a distinct difference between the two!

Your teacher's concern about using a general website as a source for research probably stems from the fact that it can be difficult to verify whether the information contained on a general website is accurate or not, since anyone can publish information on the Internet regardless of whether or not it is factual. This is, of course, not to say that all websites are inaccurate (not by a long stretch!), just that there is no real formal system in place for vetting all the information that gets put out there. 

Which brings us to online research databases:
Subscription online Research Databases (such as the hundreds offered by MCPL) are web-based and do have an URL just like any other website (which is part of why this whole situation can be very confusing!); but the big difference is that the content in them is carefully checked for accuracy by their publishers. Subscribers (like the Library) pay for access to that content, so that information must be accurate and up to date.

How do you let your teacher know that the information you used came from a reputable subscription database rather than some random website? One key lies in the way you cite it. As a general rule, including the name of the database you used in your citation, as well as or instead of (depending on the style you are using) the URL of the page the actual information came from, will tell those looking at your citations that your source is not just any old website. Many Research Databases now even include links to correctly formatted citation information for all of their content, so look out for that wonderful feature to save yourself some time.

If you need more information on how to format your citations and the different styles most commonly used, MCPL has a number of Literature and Language Arts databases  that might help you out. Facts on File Writer's Reference Center is my personal recommendation to get you started. Or, you could do things the old fashioned way and check our catalog for writing style guides. And (not to confuse everything I've been talking about) there are a lot of great websites out there to help you write citations. One of my favorites is the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL).

 Happy researching!

-Molly M.
Lee's Summit Branch