About the Internet
If you use the Internet for research, you must be able to carefully evaluate websites.
It is important to understand that the Internet is very different from a library. The contents of libraries like the Laney College Library or the Oakland Public Library are carefully chosen by professional librarians. Library materials may become out of date in time, but everything in a library was purchased because a librarian decided that it had value and importance for readers.
The Internet, on the other hand, is a completely open and public forum. Nobody controls what goes up on the Internet; anybody who has the technical resources and know-how can put up anything they want. On the Internet you can find violence, pornography, lies, political and religious propaganda of all kinds, racism and hate literature. You can also find excellent sources of information; and you can often find websites that may have a certain bias (that is to say, a point of view or opinion), but may also be good sources of information as long as you remain aware of what their bias is. It is your job as a researcher to decide whether a website is a good source of information for your research.
There are many questions to ask yourself about a website before you decide to use it in your research. One or two negative answers may not necessarily mean that the source is useless; but a pattern of negative answers, and especially evidence of extreme bias or dishonesty, mean that you should not use the source.
Go to http://www.google.com and enter Martin Luther King. Look at the following three Websites that this search will bring up:
The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/
Martin Luther King, Jr.--A True Historical Examination
http://www.martinlutherking.org/
The King Center
http://www.thekingcenter.org/
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