Researching in a Digital Age

In today’s “digital era” it is both a blessing and a curse to have access to millions of unlimited data resources. As a student researcher, I have found that doing research for whatever I need it for, class, something I’m interested in, research, etc., there will always be something on the specific subject I need found on the internet. Now, as said in Who Says, its the credibility of that source that is the true problem. You can’t always be sure if what is being read on the internet can truly be trusted as an academic source or simply correct information. There must be a credible author, site, information, along with many citations quoting where the information came from. Majority of the data found on the web is often opinion pieces, personal statements, and individual writing. While the internet has provided us many new opportunities, especially in the writing world, the information created isn’t necessarily good to use in an academic way. Websites like Blogger, Wix, and even Wikipedia allow for anyone in the world who has access to a computer to think, write, and “publish” their thoughts on the public internet. But, the problem is, I can’t use a blog post opinion piece as a source for a World War I paper in my history class.

These newfound ways of connecting data bases and sharing information isn’t all negative. This has also provided many people millions of sources for academic information. This is also beneficial to people who maybe don’t have access to a place they can get books or maybe don’t have the money to invest in finding resources. The internet creates a free compilation of every time of information you can find on millions and millions of different topics in all different shapes and forms. We can use resources like in Atkins library to search articles, books, e-books, etc., in not only our giant UNC Charlotte database, but databases all over the state at other schools like NC State or Chapel Hill. Without the internet providing all of these sources to us, we would all be much more limited when it came to our academic research. Our work probably wouldn’t be as good either. We wouldn’t be able to go to the measures that we can now with all this information simply at our fingertips. While there is a negative aspect to researching in a digital age, I think people overlook how beneficial it’s been to our research and academic success as a whole.