We get information in all different ways every day - spoken words from friends and teachers, news reports from television or newspapers, social media, advertisements, books, magazines, religious texts, road signs, etc. These are all information “formats.” It’s important to think about why some formats are more valuable than others.
In our personal lives, we decide what information to trust and what information to distrust based on our own opinions and beliefs. If you trust your Mom as a person, you probably trust most of the information she tells you. If you believe a certain TV news network is politically biased, you probably mistrust most of the information you hear there.
In academic settings, it’s important to remember that we don’t use our personal standards to decide which information is valuable. The academic standard is that we only use scholarly sources. Scholarly sources are valuable because they are trustworthy. Here are some terms related to scholarly sources:
Scholarly: Serious, informative articles that contain data and rigorous research
Source: A place to get information
Peer reviewed: Evaluated and green-lighted by experts (peers) in that field before publication (This is the gold standard of scholarly sources.)
Database: trustworthy collection of scholarly information. This is usually (but not always) articles, images, chapters, books, films, or historical records. SPCC pays for subscriptions to databases that all students can access through the library website. Different databases specialize in different types of information.
Citation: Giving proper credit to the source of a piece of information by telling your readers the title, author, and publication details of your sources
Short & Long Formats
Some information formats are long, like books, journal articles, films.
Some information formats are short, like logos, tweets, specialized colors, and photographs.
The size or length of the format doesn't determine how credible or trustworthy it is. Both long and short format information can be appropriate for academic research and writing.
Often, the same information can be found in more than one format. When information is in multiple different formats, the details are often a little bit different from one format to another. This means that some formats may be more valuable than other formats, even if they contain mostly the same information.
For example, the story of Harry Potter can be found in different formats - books, movies, graphic novels, etc. In each format, though, there are slight differences, omissions, and additions.
Your instructors will tell you what formats they expect you to use in your sources. You can usually use a variety of different formats in your work. The format of a source isn't necessarily what matters - it's the credibility of the source that matters.
The best sources for your academic research will come from the library databases. Read on to find out how to use them.
