Today's Hours:
Who is your audience?
Who are you trying to:
What level of 'expertise' needs to be in your output? Basic, general, non-expert? Really detailed, scholarly information such as results of research? Or maybe a bit of both? (Ultimately, your assignment's description and details should make this clear.)
Do you know where to go for the kinds of information you need? The internet? Academic databases? Can you use 'grey literature'? Do you know where to find that? Or what can be found on government websites? Do you know where the trustworthy info. is? Or the difference between different types of research studies, if you need to find a particular kind?
When you ask yourself those kinds of questions before starting your searching, if you're not sure, review our list of what info. sources are in our collections, where you can go to find them, and what they're good for, as well as other pages here (such as evaluating found information).
Meaning, if the professor requires you to find and use specific types or formats of information...make sure you get those minimum required resources in there!
Don't glance at the assignment once, then assume your recall all the requirements, only to find out you missed having one peer-reviewed article as one of your sources, for example....and you lost points. (You may not want to make extra work for yourself, either, by including sources you thought you needed to add...but didn't actually have to.)
Academic / Scholarly information:
Popular / not-by-experts information:
Info for working professionals, but not research studies
Yes; examples of all these things can be found on the internet - BUT remember: you can avoid the need to make sure what you found on some webpage is actually 'real' and reputable, by looking in our curated databases instead. (Saves you that extra step.)