There comes a time when we have to conduct research. It could be for a school project, a presentation or a report that you have to submit. Back in the day, research was a strenuous process. It meant hitting the library and diving into books, journals and newspaper – a true hunt for information. Today, you don’t have to hit the library, but that does not mean researching is fun, for most of us at least, it’s still a bore. The internet is our research haven, a one stop spot. So how do you get done with this cumbersome and tiresome process quickly?
Correct Keywords
The internet is vast and search engines are your best portals for digging up information. You have got to type in the correct keywords if you want to come across the correct information. Some research will just need very straight forward keywords such as a name of a person or a company, while others require more than that just that. Articles such as ‘a’, ‘the’ and ‘an’ don’t really matter in sentence, so don’t bother about a sentence structure. Start with a broad spectrum of keywords and slowly narrow it down.
Search Engines
When it comes to search engines, Google maybe considered the best, but don’t restrict yourself to Google. This is just in case, you are not able to find the information you’re hunting for. Bing, Google, Yahoo Search all work with different algorithms which give you different sets of results.
Bookmark
Make use of the bookmark option. When you research, you’re going to be opening tens and tens of web tabs; all of them possibly websites that could give you the required information for your research. Instead, of keeping these tens and tens of web tabs open, you could bookmark the ones that hold an interest to you.
If you’ve ever done research before, you will always get a feeling that you shouldn’t have closed a particular website. By bookmarking, you save yourself from the hassle of digging through the search engine once again.
Filtering Content
As much as the internet is a sea of information, you cannot trust all the content you stumble upon, so be wary, be careful. Make certain that whatever information you read upon and is relevant to your topic comes from authentic sources. These sources could be mentioned in the article itself or as footnotes at the end of the article. Be wary if it is a marketing article with only bloated information. Also, a lot of articles on the internet will be filled with comments and opinions, so learn to distinguish them from the facts.
Back to the Library
Library is filled with books and it is a treasure trove of information. Sometimes, when it comes to finding particular statistics and such, the internet may fall short. At the library, once again, keywords will be your ally, so make use to the indexes and find the correct information.