Information is all around us. Books, professional journals, popular magazines, television, and now the Internet are ubiquitous. Some would say we have information overload. Others would say that we are fortunate to have so many sources of knowledge. The problem most of us face, however, is unlocking and managing this information.

How do we know where to find what we really want to know? And when we find it, how can we be sure that it is reliable, relatively objective, and complete? A librarian certainly can help, as can knowledge of reliable publishers in a given discipline. In the online environment, however, there is little discrimination among the myriad sites available. Anyone can post a Web site. Anyone has access to it. How can we identify a reliable source? How can we know that the most current information is posted? The exercises in this chapter are designed to illustrate some methods of identifying accurate and relevant material.