Google and Yahoo! have fostered the belief that if you can type, then you are a researcher. In my experience, the DIY researcher’s greatest failings occur in the following areas:
- poor source selection
- not understanding that a hierarchy of authorities may exist for the research topic
- not understanding the relationship between time, money, and value
- not understanding how error and bias may appear in search results; and finally, terminology.
Most DIY searchers do not prepare for the search by collecting the synonyms and antonyms, thesauri, dictionaries, and the British and American spelling differences. They don’t take time to consider appropriate terms and phrases then make a list to work through.
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