ACADEMIC & POPULAR SOURCES
Why popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo are neither effective nor acceptable for getting materials for your research papers and projects
If you want to find information about any given topic or subject for your own benefit, such as when Mother's Day was first celebrated, then a popular or freely available search engine such as Google, AltaVista, Yahoo, or Teoma can be fine.
However, when your instructor assigns you a research paper, she or he will NOT want you to use a popluar search engine, or rely on Google for your research.
Let’s suppose you have been assigned to write a 6-page research paper using at least 5 "scholarly" sources (we’ll discuss what scholarly sources are in a little while). The paper has to be argumentative and focus on a debate or controversy that is at least 10 years old, such as technology in education.