The purpose of this tutorial is to give you a quick start toward a good research project. That's why we've left out the Internet as a source of research information. Starting your research with the Internet is usually a bad idea.

There are two, related sets of issues that weigh against starting your research with the Internet.

The first set of issues has to do with getting a QUICK start. While you can get lots of hits by entering your research topic into an Internet search engine, it's also true that you will need to spend a lot of time looking at all those results to pick out the good ones. Internet search engines are designed to return lots of results, but they mix all the results together. By using the kinds of sources introduced in this tutorial, you will save time.

The second set of issues has to do with the QUALITY of your research project. Books (including reference books) and published articles benefit from the scrutiny of editors, publishers, peer review groups, and others. Thanks to these "gate-keepers," you will usually find higher quality information published in these sources than you will find for free on the Internet. By focusing on a few, high quality sources, you will be able to produce a better research project.

For these reasons, we think you're better off starting with books and periodical articles than with the Internet. You may discover that some information you need is only available on the Internet. If that's true, by all means use it -- we've even recommended some sites. But you'll be better able to use Internet sources well if you begin with a solid foundation of authoritative, reliable, and current information from published sources.