When using an Internet search engine, you must be very careful to identify the type of information for every Web site visited. Use the Critical Evaluation Criteria above to evaluate information found on the Internet. An encyclopedia article is an encyclopedia article regardless of the format. Information from an electronic encyclopedia that you find on the Internet or on CD-ROM is the same as information from a print encyclopedia that you find on the reference shelves. Encyclopedia articles are only appropriate in academic research during the information gathering stages.
Encyclopedic articles provide researchers with a general background on the research topic.
Encyclopedic articles help researchers identify the language and terminology associated with the topic. Encyclopedic articles are also good sources to identify the names of people who have written about the topic. While articles from encyclopedias provide researchers with important background material on a topic, they are not usually cited in the bibliography. The information in scholarly research must come from scholarly sources. Generally, a researcher would use the information found in an encyclopedia to search through other databases and sources for scholarly material.