English 102 Library Instruction

What does it mean for a source to be credible? What are some examples of non-scholarly, credible sources?

Non-Scholarly, Credible Sources

While library databases contain some newspapers, magazines, and other non-scholarly sources, Google is a great place to get started searching for this type of information. 

You can search Google using natural language, or you can try out some of the keywords you used in the library databases. 

The most important thing to remember when searching for sources on Google that you should always investigate the credibility of a source, especially sources you are unfamiliar with. (For example, we all know that the New York Times is a reputable newspaper, but we might not all be familiar with the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.)

You can quickly and easily assess credibility by checking to see what you can find out about a source. Simply open up a new tab and Google the source to see what it is. If I Google the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, I can quickly find out from a Wikipedia article that it is a daily newspaper in Bozeman, Montana, and the Wikipedia article doesn't raise any red flags for me about the reliability of this newspaper. Wikipedia is often a great place to read more about a source's reputation and reliability. 

This skill of moving outside of the source to see what you can find out about it is called lateral reading. Watch a quick video all about lateral reading here.