Different generations search for information in different ways. For professors, like other Millennial and older generations, Google or one of its spinofffs is the default search tool for almost every scenario. Need a picture? Google Image. Need a scholarly reference? Google Scholar. Need to find a great quote from the old show Community?1 Google Search.
We understand from the New York Times that, for Gen Z and younger, the default search engine may no longer be Google but, instead, TikTok. To be blunt, this is horrifying to us, but then again we did lots of things that horrified our elders, too, so we’ll skip the scolding and move right to the point: neither Google nor, especially, TikTok are great search engines for serious scholarly work. You should know this now, because an undergraduate thesis really is, and should be treated as, serious scholarly work.
We’re not going to say don’t use Google, and we certainly don’t mean don’t use Google Scholar. Most of the time, for most applications, Google products will yield a satisfactory answer. But there are three scenarios when that’s not going to be enough:
When you need a solid overview of a serious topic—say, something you need to invest at least 15 or 30 minutes in.
When you need an in-depth set of resources about how scholars and other serious researchers have approached a topic.
When you need to cite a single, reliable reference source for a definition or conceptual overview.
Google—and even Google Scholar—are not good at any of these, although with practice Google Scholar can come close to doing much of what you need for the second bullet point. But for overviews and reference materials, you’re going to need to go beyond Google and sources like Wikipedia.
Now, that doesn’t mean that you need to physically go to the library and use a physical book (although eventually you probably will have to). It does mean that you need to do real searches using more specialized databases and reference sources. And to do that well, you will probably need to learn how to use the specialized reference sources and databases that your library has access to—and you’ll probably further want to talk to your librarians about how to use these.
What do those sources look like? Let’s share a quick glimpse at looking up a common concept—the prisoner’s dilemma—in the Gale Virtual Reference Library, itself a compendium of lots of books and reference volumes. Just a quick glance shows that searching in Gale is a much different experience than using Google: there’s only 94 results, instead of millions, but the results are validated, scholarly, and authoritative. They’re also long and, sadly, somewhat older than Google (yeah, real scholarship moves slower than the pace of chatGPT-enabled search engine spam). But, and here’s the important point, they are better for research.
Looking at the entry by Scott John Hammond in the volume Political Theory: An Encyclopedia of Contemporary and Classic Terms will bring up an overview that’s focused on what contemporary (well, recent past) political theorists have discussed, while the entry by William A. Darity will bring up a discussion of the game theory behind the concept itself. (Intriguingly, there are two entries for PD in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences—one for economics and one for psychology. And, no, they’re not identical.)
These sorts of sources can be extremely useful at the beginning of a project, when you’re trying to understand the basics of a whole bunch of new terms or when you’re trying to find new keywords and concepts that link to terms you kind of understand but for which you need more guidance. They can also be useful at the end of a project, when you’re writing up your theory or results and need to cite a good definition or overview of a concept that isn’t really central to your argument but which is nevertheless important. That’s where encyclopedias and reference works shine, and they do particularly well on concepts that, like the prisoner’s dilemma, haven’t really changed and are unlikely to go out of date.
Why use these sources and not other ones you can find online or even books and other sources you’re already reading? Because these are neutral, vetted, and focused reference sources that specifically aim to provide what you need in those situations, not haphazard or secondary discussions in books and articles that are focused on something else. You can and should enliven and extend your discussion with other sources, and you shouldn’t hang your central arguments on reference works alone, but these are useful places to find mortar to bind the bricks of your argument together.
We want to be clear: not all validated reference sources are behind library paywalls. The Encyclopedia Britannica is now free with ads via the Web (and, yes, it is superior or at least complementary to Wikipedia in many regards). For topics in political philosophy and theory, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is indispensable. And for many topics in computer science, methods, and so on, cutting-edge tools are only and most thoroughly discussed in online sources, sometimes even just in Github. But it’s still useful to have these traditional and now somewhat overlooked tools in your arsenal, because they can save a lot of time and a lot of grief by providing reliable, solid, and useful information.
The takeaway: Convenient search engines are meant to optimize for convenience, not reliability or academic rigor. If you want reliable knowledge, you’ll need to use specialist tools.
The practical: Talk to your adviser and your subject area librarian (ask if you don’t know what that is!) about how to find reference works.
Yes, professors reading this, Community is old. It premiered in 2009, making it 14 years old. In other words, the gap between now and Community’s premiere is the same as the gap between Community’s premiere and the premiere of Mr. Show with Bob and David.