A teacher long ago told me:  “The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to look it up.” He said this back in the days when “looking it up” often meant spending hours in the library.  Thus, as a student, I spent a lot of money acquiring a reference shelf of books – dictionaries, encyclopedias, almanacs, grammar handbooks, and so on – containing information that I was likely to need frequently .

Nowadays, with the Internet, that is no longer necessary – or at least not as necessary.  With a combination of Web searching and a lifetime supply of reference books, I can find out nearly anything I need to know, usually in a matter of minutes.  Although, for certain types of information (word definitions, for example) I still prefer my reference books, I find myself relying more and more on the Internet.

With all these sources, I am amazed at how inept people are at finding information today.  Young people (students) who have grown up in this “Information Age” seem to be, ironically, less adept at finding information than are old codgers like me, who grew up having to endure the cumbersome process of scouring the library, often for the kind of basic information that is now at the fingertips of anyone with access to a computer and an Internet connection.  Don’t they teach basic research in school anymore?  Apparently not.

What brings this to mind are some of the questions that I get on Internet Q&A sites from students who are seeking the answer to a simple factual question.  A case in point is a question that appeared not on a Q&A site but on the Forum of this Website.  The questioner wanted to know the definition of the word Chinarra, which is not in any dictionary, even the big ones.  By using the online site that accesses thousands of dictionaries (onelook.com), I determined that, indeed, Chinarra was not listed. I then went to Google, my favorite search engine, and entered the word.  The third entry on the page that Google provided gave me a listing of North American Indian tribes, of which Chinarra is one.  The entire process took five minutes.

Many of the questions I receive are even simpler than that: the population of a certain country, the date a book was published, the definition of a word that is in the dictionary.  True, sometimes the reason the individual can’t find the word is that he or she has misspelled it, but some search engines actually allow for possible misspellings and make an educated guess that leads to the answer.

If you’re reading this, you have access to a computer and the Internet.  You owe it to yourself to become familiar with what’s available and to learn how to do a search.  If you have your own computer, you should develop the habit of bookmarking (or marking as “favorites”) useful reference sites to which you are likely to return.  If there aren’t many, you can create a folder in your bookmarks or favorites entitled “References”; if there are a lot, you can do as I have done and establish folders by subject area.

Granted, some information is still hard to find.  If you want, for example, an explanation for a rule of English grammar, a search engine will probably give you so many “hits” that you’ll spend a considerable amount of time exploring the options until you have your answer.  (However, bookmarking the source when you do will give you a direct route to follow the next time you have a grammar question.)  If you want an opinion on something or a discussion of a topic, a search engine may not be the best choice.  Here is where familiarity with Q&A sites and Forums such as the one provided by this Website pay off.  If the site is active, you’ll be able to tap the opinion or knowledge of an expert within twenty-four hours.

One caveat is very important: Not everything on the Internet is true.  Nowadays, almost anyone can publish a Website, and unfortunately some of these people post misinformation – either from ignorance or spitefulness. “Experts” on Q&A sites may give incorrect answers.  Nevertheless, the Internet is a tremendously useful source of information, and it’s fairly easy to learn how to use it.  Any student today who tells me that he or she can’t find information isn’t looking very hard.

FOOTNOTE:   I do not mean to discourage questioners from using the Forum on this Website.  Most of the questions there have pertained to matters for which answers cannot be found via a simple search.