Government publications
Government publications. Regardless of whether you are writing a report, preparing for a debate, or simply learning something new for the fun of it, identifying and reading sources that provide relevant, valid information about the subject at hand is very important. If you dont use relevant, valid information, you may write, say, or learn something that is misleading or untrue. A number of criteria are commonly used to determine if certain written materials are relevant and valid. These criteria include the authors credibility, the date of publication, the publisher, etc. For instance, if you are researching federal legislation such as copyright law, you are most likely to read relevant, valid information in government publications. The government writes and enforces copyright law and other federal legislation, so government publications about these laws are most likely to be timely, accurate, complete, and on topic. People commonly express their opinions, not facts, in online discussion forums. Search engines are software programs that automatically crawl the Web looking for information pertaining to specified search terms and display a list of results. The search engines themselves do not contain information about federal legislation; they direct you to other web sitessome good and some not so goodabout federal legislation such as copyright law. Political blogs typically reflect the opinions of their writers, so their information may or may not be relevant or valid.