Bertrand FAQ

Freely available Internet search engines, such as Google, can be used to help you find websites, images, documents, and other information online. However, search engines are only able to retrieve websites, etc. that are publicly available. They will not be able to retrieve articles or other information from private sources, such as the databases paid for by the library.

Because anyone can publish on the Internet and there is often no editorial control over the content of websites, it is often difficult to discern if the information contained in a publicly available website is of appropriate quality to be used for scholarly research. In addition, because of the lack of organization and standardization of the Internet, search engines are not able to retrieve information with the precision that a privately created database does. A guide to evaluating online sources can be found in the Evaluating and Narrowing Sources section of the library’s How to Start Your Research: A DIY Guide.