information from many different sources. You also have to know that the information is relevant for your purpose. In order to use the library efficiently, you have to be able to find relevant and reliable information quickly so that you do not waste your time. I’m going to cover two main aspects today.
• I’ll start by contrasting the different sources of information and explain how you can decide which ones are more reliable.
• Then I’ll explain how we organize the books and journals in the library so you can find them easily.
Part 2
LIBRARIAN: OK, so let’s think about sources of information. If you want to find information, what do you usually do? STUDENT: Look on the Internet.
LIBRARIAN: Yes, that’s what most people do; they search on the Internet. Probably you use one of the search engines such as Google or Yahoo, but is that the best way to find information for your degree subject? Let’s think about some of the differences between information on the Internet and in the library. This will help to decide if the information is reliable.
First, we can think about purpose: why is the information put on the Internet or in the library? Well, people often put information on the Internet so they can sell you things, whereas we keep information in the library so students and lecturers can build their knowledge about a subject and develop new ideas. There are many web pages to sell goods and services, but there are also others to sell ideas.
Then we can consider the viewpoint of the information. When people want to sell ideas, they only show the advantages of the ideas and not the disadvantages. They show the views of people who agree with the ideas and not views that disagree. In the library, we try to keep a wide range of information, which includes many views about the advantages and the disadvantages of the ideas.
Another important difference between the Internet and the library is the author. Anyone can publish their ideas on the Internet. However, published books and journals are usually written by experts, people who have studied the subject deeply for a long time. These sources have been checked by other experts, such as editors, to make sure that they are reliable, in other words, that their quality is good. No one checks the quality of most information on the Internet. Now it is true that there is some good-quality, reliable information on the Internet, but you have to learn how to recognize good quality.
So, to summarize what I’ve said, you can decide if information is reliable by thinking about its purpose: Why has it been published? Is it trying to sell ideas? Then you can think about the viewpoint: Does it show many different views? Or does it show just one view? You can find out if the author is an expert in his or her subject. Has he or she published a lot of other books? Finally, you can decide if the information has been checked by other experts. This is a good checklist to evaluate reliability.
I hope I’ve convinced you that the library is a good place to find information. So now I’ll move on to explain how we organize the books and journals.
ACCESS EAP: Foundations 207 Key words
the search engines whereas build knowledge develop goods and services consider the viewpoint the views agree disagree a wide range includes the author publish however experts deeply have been checked editors it is true that … but to recognize to summarize finally a checklist to evaluate reliability convinced move on
Key words
relevant contrasting journals
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192 |
Page 193 |
Page 194 |
Page 195 |
Page 196 |
Page 197 |
Page 198 |
Page 199 |
Page 200 |
Page 201 |
Page 202 |
Page 203 |
Page 204 |
Page 205 |
Page 206 |
Page 207 |
Page 208 |
Page 209 |
Page 210 |
Page 211 |
Page 212 |
Page 213 |
Page 214 |
Page 215 |
Page 216 |
Page 217 |
Page 218 |
Page 219 |
Page 220 |
Page 221 |
Page 222 |
Page 223 |
Page 224 |
Page 225 |
Page 226 |
Page 227 |
Page 228 |
Page 229 |
Page 230 |
Page 231 |
Page 232
