A Note on the Internet The Internet has many virtues and, indeed, it has now become an essential tool for scholarly research (as it has in so many other areas of life). It is extremely important that you know, however, that the Internet has limitations. The most significant of these is that there is little historical content on the Web; whatever content does exist in cyberspace typically dates from the creation of the Net itself (the mid-1990s) and hence may be of very limited use to history students. Many scholarly organizations, libraries and universities (as well as newspapers, magazines, news wires and other information-gathering organizations) have posted sophisticated indexes on the Web, which are extremely useful in finding research resources; but for the most part the resources themselves still exist only in hard copy in lending institutions. You cannot, in short, expect to find sources on the Web that will take the place of books, articles and especially primary documents. This situation is, however, changing rapidly as various archives, universities, think tanks and libraries digitize and post original collections online. The posting of original historical documents promises top be a boon to undergraduate students; but, as with any primary sources, they must be treated with caution. When you find historical (or other scholarly) content on the Web, it is imperative that you judge its quality as you would any other source, i.e. with reference to its authorship, bibliographic credentials, institutional credibility, etc. Anonymous or poorly attributed sources from the Internet will not be regarded as acceptable sources in university-level research and writing. |