Library - Stone or Electronic?
Despite the enormous growth of the possibilities provided by the Internet, “stonelibraries” are still irreplaceable. There you will find books, scientificjournals, research reports, theses and dissertations, conference materials, technical standards, manuals, yearbooks, encyclopaedias, dictionaries, etc. Sometimes just browsing through the shelves will give you a wealth of new ideas.
One useful service provided by libraries is information retrieval (in Slovak, “Rešerš”).You fill in a simple form (subject information, key words, requested period,form of output—electronic or printed, and when you need it to be done). All the work will be done by librarians and searching machines. However, for most research projects, we do advise you to do the search by yourself, since you can do the preliminary selection. Otherwise you can be overwhelmed by the amount of resources a library service will find, and it will take you a lot of time to sort it.
What are the differences between the “hardcopy resources” and “Internet resources”? Some professors still underestimate the value of information found on the Internet. It is important to learn how to evaluate online resources. However, once you have found a really valuable and reliable Internet source, there is no reason not to use it just because it is not printed. In the future there will be still more and more journals on-line, more and more e-books for several good reasons — they cost lessto publish, save paper (nature-friendly), and spread the information more easily.
Nevertheless, real paper books still have their advantages. You can touch them, smell them,even spill your coffee on them 
, and mostly — they contain information which has been reviewed, checked, and more lasting.
On the other hand, Internet resources can appear very quickly. The information on the Internet is up-to-date. The statistics,data, analyses – all that may appear on the Internet the same moment it is finished, just by several clicks.
So the kinds ofresources you will use depend on your topic and the scope of your researchproject. When in doubt, feel free to approach your teacher and ask for some advice – teachers usually like students who are interested and eager to learn.