Choosing Sources for Writing March 29

Choosing appropriate, credible sources whose purpose is to support and justify the claims you make within your paper can be a difficult task. It is a crucial portion of writing an academic essay, whether or not sources are required for the paper being written. When I approach this daunting task I turn to Google Scholars to find articles from academic journals, magazine articles and newspaper publications. Google is such a diverse search engine you can easily switch between 'scholar' or 'news' or even 'images' to find the information you're inquiring about. I have had bad luck using the resources providing on the WSU Library website. Most journal articles must be requesting through the world library program and, though it is something that could use improvement, I am unwilling to request the document, wait for it and then finally use it in a paper whose due date could have long expired. When browsing the results of my google search, using the scholars filter, I look on the right side of the findings for the pdf option. This link to the 'portable document format' is a hint as to the credible of the document, at least that's what I believe. It seems to me, from personal experience and using other search engines, that those documents that have the pdf version available are more credible, to some extent, because you are able to view the entire work and the information needed for citing your results is included on the page. Once I've chosen a source I am able to use any part of the document because I have the whole thing available. I like to choose parts of the text that are emphasized, well worded and compact bits of information that display the point of view I intend to highlight but won't take up a page of writing to explain.

To improve my method of finding and using sources within my writing I think it would be beneficial for me to use the library computers for finding articles and journal publications. However with so much literature converted to online data bases it seems the education system will soon be changing to fit the technological advances that are taking place.