Scholarly Peer Reviewed Journal Articles (example)

• Strengths: often based on research findings or extensive review, written by experts, reviewed by experts (peer reviewed), provides evidence
• Weaknesses: Sometimes written using discipline-specific language or terminology, hard to understand

Encyclopedias (example)

• Strengths: short, contains background information on a topic, normally a great starting point when you are just learning about a topic
• Weaknesses: too short, sometimes Wikipedia has reliability issues

Books (example of scholarly book)

• Strengths: Provides an in-depth investigation into a topic
• Weaknesses: too long, sometimes hard to tell whether it is scholarly

Media Sources (news, online magazine articles)

• Strengths: Good for current information
• Weaknesses: Sometimes biased, sometimes written to entertain, often not written by experts

Websites & Social Media

• Strengths: Highly accessible, includes government info or information from non-governmental organizations like the World Health Organization
• Weaknesses: It is hard to assess credibility and reliability...anyone can post online or create a website

Here are some additional tips for identifying trustworthy websites:

Tip #1 : If you are not familiar with an organization, look them up before using their information in your assignment. 

Do not rely on an organization's About Us page or be distracted by an official sounding name. Wikipedia can be helpful here, as their entry for an organization will usually provide information on its history, political affiliations, sources of funding, and any recent controversies they might have been involved in. Here is an example - Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (CO2 Science). 

Tip #2: Websites that end in .org are not necessarily trustworthy. 

Any non-profit organization can apply for a .org website, regardless of where they stand on an issue. For example, both the United Nations and the National Rifle Association (NRA) have websites that end in .org. Make sure you look at more than the website address to determine if a site is trustworthy.

Tip #3: Even if the page is from a trusted source, look at when it was last updated to ensure the information is still current.

Organizations like the United Nations or the Government of Canada manage thousands of webpages, and not all of them are updated on a regular basis. If you are writing about a fast changing topic, this may matter.

Tip #4: Take advantage of Google's advanced search features to search more effectively

a) Use allintitle: to find particular words in the title of the website

For example, the following search will only find webpages that have the phrase fast fashion and the word environment in their title

b) You can search within a particular website or type of website for resources using site: in Google 

For example, the following search will find Canadian government resources on sustainable fisheries (all federal government websites end in gc.ca)

LibrarySearch can help you uncover a variety of sources about the book The Lorax, its impact and reception, and on what motivated the author to write it. Here are a few search tips:

• Dr. Seuss' real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel. You can use either Seuss or Geisel in your search e.g.

• Consider using scholarly articles, books, or reference entries as potential sources. You can limit to a particular kind of source using the Resource Type limit on the right hand side of the screen once you have some search results. Reference entries refer to brief articles in scholarly encyclopedias.
  • example of a reference entry: Geisel, Theodor (Dr. Seuss). (2018). In American Environmental leaders (3rd ed.). 
• If you only want to see sources about the book and not about the more recent film, you can do an advanced search like the following in LibrarySearch. NOT tells the search you do not want the terms movie or film in your results. Use NOT sparingly as it may accidentally exclude useful sources.