Turning the Tide from Google in Student Research

I wasn't surprised by the findings that using Google may be making us different readers than we have been in the past. (Carr, N. Is google making us stupid?  Atlantic Magazine. July 2008. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/).  That the company is systematizing the information it shares and how they deliver it is natural considering the enormous amounts of data they store and deliver.  And, considering this relatively newer medium and its pervasiveness in our society, it is no wonder that its contents have changed the way we read and access information.

What concerns me is that students and anyone, for that matter, often work under the premise that Google will deliver it all so they restrict their inquiry to that "source'-- sometimes they don't even realize that Google isn't "source" material in the original sense. Google collects the information available; the students need to discern among the thousands of entries they are likely to find to determine the best ones for their own research. Google only cares about the keywords a student uses; not about the nuances of the research question. In this way, and this is true for all research I think, the search is only as smart as the searcher.

Add the fact that Google only returns that information that is found in the "visible" web, and you have an incomplete recipe for research. The rich primary source materials found in academic databases are often overlooked because students often think Google "has it all".

I have spent years trying to turn the tide of this thinking in students' research. One of the most effective means I have used is an xtranormal video. Social media that teaches about this issue is more effective than my talking to a group of students ever was.  I believe that it allows the students to see and hear the expectations from the second person point of view, a less intimidating approach. Explaining that they would have to answer 10 questions (from the ELM databases) about each link on a Google search to determine the reliability of the information seemed to help students seek out the already scholarly reviewed material found in "invisible" databases, also.