My Teacher Said Not To Use The Internet

Generally, when people talk about the Internet they are referring to the public freely accessible portion, the part where anyone can say anything they want. More and more research is being digitized and made available online. For example, the library now subscribes to most of its journals in a digital form. So if you want to use peer-reviewed or scholarly articles in your research, you'll need to use one of our online databases to find them. Technically these articles are online, but they are not what your teacher wanted you to avoid.

The library has access to lots of great online resources that aren't searchable through Google.

Distinguishing between the public and private sections can be confusing because you use the exact same computer, the same browser, and things look like the web. The difference is that the private portions are only available to limited audiences, usually those who have paid for access.

Private portions that can be very useful to you are the reference databases and online periodicals that the ACC library subscribes to because these will directly relate to your paper. These sources of information are usually actually better than the public World Wide Web. (Remember: Even the biggest web search engines, such as Google, do NOT search these databases.)

• This information has gone through much more quality control than the public part of the web.
• The writers are more likely to have credentials in their field.
• Your searches usually get better, more relevant results than when you use the entire web.

The ACC Libraries have paid for access to over 100 online databases.