Student survival guide personal action plan - Essay Example

University education requires a large amount of independent learning and often involves search for information. Information is required to construct ideas, theories, or data. A variety of sources provide such information; but the most obvious ones are the University Library and the internet. Libraries can be either paper libraries or digital ones, where the contents of books are stored in digital form. Searching for information in books consumes too much time and hence it is preferable to access digital libraries on occasions when time could be a limiting factor.

Also, the information contained in a book may not be updated. Hence library searches are better conducted within digital sources. Searching through digital catalogues offers speed and convenience, with an added advantage that one can access these from remote locations. Internet is the most convenient source of information because time, space or location doesn’t constrain it. Following guidelines will provide an overview of how best to search the internet. But they are not exhaustive; the World Wide Web has such potential that people can, and need to customize it to meet their specific requirements: 2.

Use a search engine that displays results from more than one source – sometimes referred to as a meta-crawler – info.com is one such, though google.com gives excellent results fast, provided the search criteria are selected properly. Advanced search options needs to be used to refine searches. Commercial sites tend to be unreliable as far as a student is concerned. University sites and sites with .org and .edu suffixes should be preferred. However, the objectivity of opinions expressed in individual sites must be assessed after careful reading, since many activist sites masquarade as authentic unbiased ones.

Passing off another person’s work as one’s own is unethical, apart from being unlawful. However,