Chris Nolan Talk

Our Assistant Librarian, Chris Nolan, came to speak to us about search engines. He described several, and mentioned that one of his favorites was Bing. It was very interesting to learn about all of the capablilites of sites such as the Coates Library online database, and google. I learned that google offers many possibilities to narrow down a search, such as advanced search. Something new I learned was that you can simply define a word by writing define:word in Google. Google offers Google Scholar, which provides the user with only academic sources, which is very useful when writing research papers which I frequently have had to do. I also learned the importance of credible sources. Many sites contain false information, and I was surprised to learn that educational sites that usually end with .edu or organizations .org, have now been being displayed on websites that are not in fact educational at all, one example being wikipedia. When trying to figure out if a site is a credible source, it is important to note who the author is, and there should be a background provided about him/her, as well as other links to other works or their profile.