Make sure you know the kinds of sources required for your assignment (e.g. scholarly books or articles, primary sources), as this can impact the way you search for information.
Library resources have powerful search and filtering tools that you won't find on the web! For books and eBooks, use the McKillop Library catalog. For articles, use one of the library's many subscription databases. The sub-pages in this section offer guidance on using these tools. At all stages of your research, continue to reflect frequently on how each resource is contributing to your understanding of your topic and helping (or not helping) to answer your questions.
As you find books or articles that look promising ...
Scan the summary or abstract
Does the article or book...
If not, try again -- sometimes we have a better understanding of what we want when we realize what we don't want! Remember: research is iterative -- sometimes you can get a better set of results by slightly modifying your search terms and keywords.
Evaluate Sources and Fact-check Claims
Fact-checking websites, such as Snopes, Politifact, and Factcheck.org evaluate claims online and their fact-checking process provides methods you can also follow. Web evaluation techniques such as lateral reading can help you assess accuracy of claims by showing what reliable sources saying about a topic, or how they assess the credibility of another source.
You can choose from several frameworks for evaluating online information.
The SIFT method is an strategy developed by digital literacy expert, Mike Caulfield, to aid in evaluating claims found in online media. SIFT stands for Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, and Trace claims, quotes, and media to their original context.The University of Chicago Library hosts a guide that outlines the SIFT method.
The CRAAP Test is a strategy developed by California State University, Chico, to help evaluate web sources using the criteria Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy and Purpose. Each criterion includes questions to evaluate the nature and value of online information. The University of Chicago also has a guide on the CRAAP test.
The 5W questions provide a series of questions around Who, What, When, Where, Why, to evaluate information, which includes guidance on evaluating how the information creator cites their sources and how to be reflective about why you would choose to one source over another. Consumnes River College Library provides a worksheet walking you through questions using this framework.
There is no overall, Salve-wide policy on the use of artificial intelligence tools in coursework. This is because different disciplines use artificial intelligence tools in different ways, and the use of artificial intelligence tools at different points of your education may help or hurt your development of important skills. Your professor should specify whether they will allow the use of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT either in your course syllabus or in course assignments. If you are unclear about a particular use of AI, check with your professor.
To comply with your professor's requirements, and with tools like CoPilot, ChatGPT, and Google's AI Overviews becoming more ubiquitous in general web searching, it's critical to understand the dangers to your skill development of relying on generative AI tools during your education, how generative AI tools work, how to construct effective prompts if you are allowed and choose to use them, and to evaluate sources provided by a AI tool.
How to work with Gen AI Tools that Synthesize, Cite, and Use Sources
As a general practice, you should always read the sources that a generative AI tool has provided, summarized, or cited to ensure that the AI did not make errors, flatten nuance, or over- or under-emphasize points in the text. In addition, finding, choosing, reading, and drawing your own conclusions from original texts provides essential skills that you will need in your future life and career, and relying too heavily on AI tools to do this work for you can deprive you of the opportunity to develop these skills.
As of this writing in August 2025, Google's AI overviews are very prone to errors and may cite dubious sources. ChatGPT 4o still has problems with hallucinating or making up sources, and does not cite sources the way you would in a paper, that is, noting the exact source where an idea came from. Tools like ChatGPT filter your query through an algorithm, search the open internet for information, and generate an answer to your query. ChatGPT cannot provide exact sources that specifically answer each of its assertions as you need to do when you cite in your papers. Perplexity, Google Gemini, and CoPilot do cite sources for specific assertions.
Also, ChatGPT, Perplexity.ai, and CoPilot can access only freely available material from the open internet, and which does not include a lot of scholarly sources. When you need scholarly sources, use library databases. Tools like Elicit, Consensus, and SciSpace are AI scholarly research tools which you might find helpful. However, keep in mind they do not have access to as many articles or the disciplinary scope and depth that library databases provide.
Not disclosing AI use and fact-checking chatbot responses and sources can result in incorrect information and academic integrity violations.
Constructing Effective Prompts
Here are some tips on how construct a clear and specific prompt:
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