Alexandra Bowler
Metaliteracy
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When conducting academic research, using the search engine Google is a great way to
get a general understanding of your topic before moving on to the later stages of the
research process. Using Google is one of the first steps you should take but by no means
is it the only method you should use for an academic paper. Sometimes a simple Google
search yields websites that are not completely reliable or suitable for academic use. A
simple Google search will not result in the academic or scholarly journals that should be
utilized and referred to when conducting research. Using databases as opposed to a
general web search will yield more sufficient sources and allows you to narrow down
your field of search.
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I will definitely make use of the university library databases that they include on their
webpage. There is an option to organize them by subject which helped narrow down my
search a lot and provide me with ample sources to use during my research. Prior to this
challenge, I had no knowledge of databases to use; I strictly used Google Scholar but the
databases provide a lot more.