The Free Web/Internet vs. Library Online Databases The Internet is a worldwide system of computer networks. When you search the Internet through search engines like Google and Dogpile, you are searching the “free” areas of the Internet. Your results will be a list of web sites. Some sites are for entertainment; some are for academic research. Others may be commercial or post opinions, and some even intentionally give out false information. Anyone can publish anything on the Web, whenever they want, so you have to evaluate the web site in order to determine if the information is accurate and reliable. Databases are an information service provided to you as a student at Marywood University. The university library pays for you to be able to access these services both on and off campus. These databases include thousands of magazines newspapers, scholarly journals and some reference books. Because the library databases contain mostly scholarly information and are designed to allow convenient searching of scholarly topics, they are very well suited for scholarly research. Exploring the Differences: Databases are like Premium Cable (the school pays big bucks to subscribe to them). The Internet/Web is like Network television, it’s basically free. You will NOT find the same resources using Yahoo or AOL that you will from InfoTrac, LEXIS/NEXIS, JSTOR, and other Databases. It is important to realize that the databases are not the Internet. Even though you access the databases using an Internet browser, you are not searching the "open" Internet. If your instructor states that you can only use one Internet source, the databases should not count as that Internet source. EBSCOHost’s Academic Search Elite, Infotrac’s Academic ASAP, and Wilson Web are all example of databases.