Go back to the broad search ("American Indian" without the "AND"). Click the first article, "American Indian."

We'll talk about other evaluation techniques in a minute, but for now, scroll to the end of the article to notice some details. First, the article is unsigned, so we cannot evaluate its authors' credentials. Second, although the article is followed by some "related Internet links," it does not include a bibliography. (In the early stages of research, we're looking for authoritative bibliographies to guide our source-hunting.) Finally, the absence of a bibliography makes it hard to evaluate how thorough and up-to-date the article is.

Now scroll back up to the Britannica Online "search" box and use it to search for "Native American" (again without the "AND"). Then choose the article beginning "member of any of the aboriginal peoples . . ." Here is another extensive article with still more subtopics, and this time the Internet links follow a "Table of Contents" that ends with an entry titled "Bibliography." An authoritative list of sources is exactly what we're looking for. Click "Bibliography." This list will help you identify classic studies. But how up-to-date is it? (Tip: What is the most recent source listed ? Some of the sources are more than twenty years old. How accurate are they likely to be in their coverage of the peopling of the Americas?)

Here's the moral of the story: Overall, Encyclopaedia Britannica Online is reputable and helpful, but we've already encountered three common problems in finding and evaluating sources: out-of-date material, unknown authorship, and confusing subject headings. (Incidentally, both of the Britannica articles tell pretty much the familiar story of the Bering Straits migration and date it at 20,000 to 30,000 years ago, admitting that it might have been much earlier. Actually, the Clovis remains [11,000 years old] were long accepted as the earliest reliably dated ones in North America, but now some remains in Pennsylvania are thought to be between 14,000 and 17,000 years old.)] We're going to have to dig deeper to get a really current overview of this challenging topic.

General encyclopedias, incidentally, may not list the latest research, but they are useful for that very reason: they selectively list well recognized, classic books and articles.

Did you notice this detail?: At the very end of the article, Britannica Online shows you how to cite the article. What a great feature! (You should be able to click and drag your cursor over the citation, copy it, and paste it into a word processing file for the first entry in a sample preliminary bibliography.)

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